Also an open world with the same biome throughout. No snow levels, desert levels, swamp levels, etc. No flying vehicle with passengers (hornet or falcon). The open world took out any of the weight that doing the side quests could have had. Rescuing generic marine squad 3 wasn't something that could impact the story, since players might have missed it. So there were no named marines to rescue, no base to bring them back to, no central base to defend against the Banished attacks. People replay open world games that make you feel like you are making a difference in the open world, at your own pace. Unlocking another firebase, or killing another boss off the beaten path, does not accomplish that.
@@ayybe7894 I do say one thing I don't like about the campaign that you only play on a single biome while most Halo games puts you in multiple biomes like from Halo 3. It definitely felt less like an open world by only sticking to a single biome. The campaign dlcs would've been a perfect opportunity to include more biomes for you to play on.
I think lack of PC optimization was worst thing with them freemium model for mp. I bought a high spec notebook, game ran at 20fps on low with its dated graphics.
Boeing tried the "fire everyone and hire contract workers" trick too. It worked even less well for them and has nearly destroyed the company. Turns out things like "institutional knowledge" and "working knowledge of the code base" and "quality control" are all kinda important.
diversity indian hires were declared "engineerers" writing software for keeping 747 flying for $10/hour until one of them fell out of the sky. Go look up how much boeing paid their indian contractors lol.
It why people that are always at arm charge length never understand why modder seem to be more capable then the actual devs. Most committed modder have been working with the code for vastly loger then the contractors.
Yeah, without full-time veteran workers, theres never a healthy "Master-Assistant"-type of work relationship going, everyone is essentially just an Assistant who has to learn everything from scratch.
My friend worked for Boeing as a contract worker for over ten years. Every time we hung out there were always new horror stories, painful bullshit, 1+1=fish nonsense. He left about a year ago now and that had a lot of interesting consequences for the company. Heck the part about the badges in the video reminded me of what he told me too. Blue badges were Boeing employees, but he was a Grey badge. In Boeing being a Grey badge meant you barely qualified as a human being as far as company policy was concerned. It was such shit.
It takes a very special kind of incompetence to squander the opportunity of both Battlefield and Call of Duty being very poorly rated in the same year. Their major competitiors were floundering and they still screwed up.
@@Calvin_Coolage if anything what is painful isn't halo infinite current state...its the "what ifs" that really get the feels going. Halo infinite could of revived the entire arena shooter genre if it has gotten its act together earlier or just had a decent launch in general. Now we are still stuck with BRs and Tactical shooters dominating the fps genre and the indie boomer shooters and fpses still being gold. At this point indie fpses have become more polished then triple A ones.
well when you look at the shitty state of aaa gaming, it really shouldn't be that shocking. look at all the aaa disasters we've had over the last few years. halo infinite, battlefield 2042, redfall, last of us on pc, star wars jedi survivor on pc, anthem, overwatch 2, gta definitive edition, forspoken, pokemon scarlet/violet. after so many aaa duds, it's really hard to have faith in our big name companies and is why the indie devs are in their golden age right now
i'm not nearly the die hard Halo fan that you are, but i do find it sad that there's younger gamers who will only know Halo from 4, 5 and this. It's crazy that there are people out there who don't realize just how important Halo was at one point. It legit feels like a niche franchise nowadays.
Its weird because the new god of war games kinda had that impact with the vast majority of people having not even played the old god of war games Well at least god of war stayed good all this time with only 2 bad-ish spinoff games Unlike halo with has been bad for more then a decade
@@valletas Those spinoffs were for the psp, so although they weren't as good as the mainline games, they were pretty decent. To this day i am still pissed that sony stopped supporting the psp, probably the best handheld gaming device that has ever been released, you had games like metal gear solid portable ops, peace walker and siphon filter. If you modded it you could even play older PS1 and PS2 games like manhunt, silent hill, parasite eve 1/2, twisted metal and dino crisis. The PSP go and PSP vita are what killed the platform and i hope sony eventually goes back to good handheld again but i doubt it after the recent reveal of the Q, which is just a terrible device that isn't even a portable device.
@@Aether-Entropy I hate how the fanbase kinda is easy to make happy: ''We want cool and fun things like the old games had'' 343: ok, guys, lets just NOT do that and do something to another audience (which not even these ''new audience'' is gonna like)
I'm not much of a Halo or Bungie fan in general, but after watching Mandalore's deep dive into a lot of their early games it's easy to see why Halo became the game it did. No matter how you liked to play Bungie put passion into it, but just like Marathon or Myth, there was a purpose for the game to exist. It is easy to see at least Infinite as nothing but a corporate game, like many sequels or remakes now, just to make a bottom line.
@@leviticusprime4904exactly. that’s almost a even sadder fate than watching Halo wither away. seeing Bungie become so invested in monetization and live service bullshit. when I saw they were making a new entry in the marathon series, I was so fucking happy about the idea of Bungie making an actual game again.. another world to get lost in. then I see it’s another free to play live service like Destiny…
@@leviticusprime4904 I mean, I can't say D2's monetization isn't sketch or that it hasn't harmed the game, but there's still a lot of good in there. Not always as reliably high quality as I'd like, but you can see the old Bungie passion for storytelling and gameplay shining through, it just gets overshadowed sometimes by extremely dubious microtransactions. They're not yet at a point where I'd say they actually outright ruin the experience, but they definitely weaken it, and I do have a bit of worry for how Marathon will turn out. Basically, I'm keeping my hopes high that it'll be another solid game with Bungie's signature wonderful gunplay and settings, but not preordering or getting too hyped. Bungie stumbles more than I'd like, but they generally pull themselves together in the end, and I hope they manage to overcome the metaphorical siren song of short-term profit optimization that's dragged so many AAA studios into the rocks. Only time will tell.
If you're younger and reading this, believe me when I say that the glory days of Halo 2 and 3 were one of those things you just had to be there for. I know the gameplay looks and probably feels dated, but back then people played these games for years
Probably the big problem with halo infinite was how dated it feels to the new generation, old school console movement and shooting just dont do it for people anymore
@@chost-059 Yup. When I saw the gameplay, I thought "nope, not a market killer. This thing handles like a rusty truck compared to everything else". Played it a bit, was not impressed, left quickly.
@@chost-059 "Advanced Movement". Its incorporation started in Reach and that is when the fanbase started to split. Advanced movement or not having it can work on either side, you just need to commit to one. They stuck to both and did it poorly.
I'll never forget walking into GameStop, and they had the demo of Halo 1, for everyone to play. And the level was "Silent Cartographer". I was maybe 10 years old. That level blew my mind when I was a child.
I remember playing that level over and over again in my school´s computers, and even other kids would come just to watch you play, it was a different time.
I was ten too when it was released. I just replayed the halo campaign on legendary on PC. It was freaking exhilarating! I can’t believe that game, just amazing
This one hurt. - Something you left out was that Custom Games were pretty broken on launch, so even if you got a lobby together, something as simple as changing the starting weapons would often fail to save. You also couldn't set starting equipment, which was one of the main new features. Any fun gametype centered around using grapplehook went out the window. When they finally DID add the custom game browser, it was "beta" and hidden in a community tab. The UI is super limited compared to the Halo 1 PC server browser, with the inability to sort by active player count WHILE seeing ping. Loading into custom games with the browser also frequently took forever or failed outright.
I played Halo 3 religiously from its release to 2013, it was basically all I played. I used to post on a forum a decade ago called NeoGAF. There was a Halo community thread that had been running for years. I posted in there frequently and one of the regulars there was Frank O'Connor. I knew even back then that Halo was not in good hands. Whenever any sort of criticism or concern was raised he would almost always disregard it. One of the main things I remember was how against a ranking system he was because "it encouraged boosting" which was insane to me because of how integral ranked was in Halo.
Hindsight is 20 : 20 and all but some of the decisions made for Infinite were so obviously going to go down like a lead balloon it makes you wonder what 343 were thinking. The tough handover and some of the leads not liking the franchise does explain their mindset a lot, especially combined with the ‘gotta push that monetisation’ ethos.
It will never make sense to any of us. This franchise was an absolute Juggernaut. It's almost imposible to comprehend how much effort it would take to kill something so powerful but they did it...
@@Kannabi420 We have seen this too many times across the board, and not only in the video gaming industry. Activision-Blizzard is perhaps the greatest and most depressing 'how the mighty have fallen' example of that case, and I was not even a Blizzard fan from the beginning. In every case, they all had success earned or inherited to them. But eventually greed, complacency and incompetence had led them to squander it all to their long-term detriment.
There was a rumour that the Slip Space engine was made by multiple teams of contract workers with none of the outgoing teams sharing notes with the incoming ones so each team that came in just did their own thing to the engine resulting in it being a steaming pile of taped together shit and none of the main team at 343 knew how to use it.
its fascinating how 343 f**ked up, not once, not twice, but every single time i used to hate microsoft, but now im just genuinely feel sad for them like did they know the definition of insanity?
I'm very impressed on the depth of your sources for these sorts of things! As someone who worked QA on Infinite during the release window, I think the only thing missing from this overview is a greater emphasis on just how much the contract employee system (which in their very weak defense is often a Microsoft-at-large thing and not at all unique to 343) impacts workflow. The employee churn in that place is absurd, not helped by the fact that in many cases replacement employees are either not found until after the previous ones have left, or they're hired at lower tiers of their positions, meaning training the incoming employees on whatever the old ones know is next to impossible, and so everyone has to spend months of their time getting up to speed before they can properly help push things forward. In some cases, it can mean the full functionality of custom tools or automation features can be more or less lost entirely as they're too complex to teach in a hurry and impossible for floundering newbies to discover for themselves. Add onto that the fact that certain divisions (especially QA) are heavily sub-divided into feature groups that barely talk to each other, and it's a whole lot of hands not knowing what the other ones are doing.
I have to say: The point you made on Halo Infinite's physics was spot on. It has been years since i played Halo 3, but I can still imagine the exact angles it would take to make each vehicle blow up or bounce off of eachother, or even the way i would need to hold my left joystick to recover from a barrel-roll. Infinite cannot compete.
So they’re just supposed to copy physics from Halo 3? lol Halo 3 most certainly did not have realistic physics so I would assume they want you to just keep copying it.
@@alexschneider8494 Realistic physics aren't necessarily fun physics. I'd rather have predictable physics so that you can recover from bad tumbles rather than just praying.
@@alexschneider8494 Yes, I want only realism in my sci-fi game. Better yet, they should make us fill the gas on our warthogs and we should lose spare bullets in our magazines on reloads. I'd also like it if they implemented a hunger and thirst system in the game 🤡
@@stumpfreakI was actually in AC beta 1 all the way to shut down. I tinkered with emulators for a little bit but I just couldn't get back into it full time after how much I was crushed when AC retail shut down. Harvestgain was my main stomping grounds while also fooling around on Darktide in the old Blood days. I know of the CoH emulator too but I guess it's the same as my AC emulator experience. One day I'd love to commit to one or the other full time seeing as modern day MMO's pale in comparison to what was the shining light of early MMO creation.
The most striking thing is seeing behind-the-scenes footage of 343i, those calling the shots are predominately corporate people who give off the impression that they have little knowledge and interest in video games, let alone the Halo franchise. They just see Halo as an asset from which they can create content to generate money. Compare that with footage of Bungie creating Halo games 20 years ago. Even at the highest levels of the company, they were all video game enthusiasts just looking to make a game that they would want to play. On top of that, creating Halo games wasn't just a job for them. It was their passion project, Halo was their baby. Bungie had built the franchise from the ground up so took pride in their work as a result. This could be seen in the final product.
Kinda weird how a lot of these "Back to the roots" type AAA games have been popping up recently and i'm pretty sure a lot of them don't actually go back to their roots.
Really one of the saddest one of these for me so far. I already kinda gave up on Halo after 5, but Infinite gave me a sliver of hope that I hadn't had for the franchise in years. To see it be debased like this.....man. Halo 3 and Reach were literally the main games of my teenage years. I truly miss it.
Killing the golden goose and surviving on the few gold eggs that were half formed inside of it does not quality as success, in my book. But, I guees, from the point of view of extremely unqualified people it can be seen as an extraordinary result, far above expectations and therefore a success.
I knew people in both 343 and The Coalition, shipping Halo Infinite was such a big deal for Microsoft that after Gears 5 even the team at The Coalition got moved to the Infinite mines. When a completely different studio has to stop their multi-year long plans to come and rescue your game you really know the situation is dire, and it also shows how much the Halo franchise meant to Microsoft, there was no option to delay it more, that game finally had to ship. Essentially Halo Infinite impacted also Gears 5 post launch life too
Honestly I knew it was a bad start when you had to play a sequel to a strategy game spin-off to understand the fps story villains. At least you could give a little summary video for those of us who didn’t play those. I’ve read the books and that didn’t help at all with the enemies.
So true 😂 I was a little lost on the story when the game came out. I guess It's pretty hard to create stakes that are remotely as interesting as the first trilogy, such as how the first set of games were about religious space aliens mistaking ancient doomsday devices as the start of the rapture.
@@SleepyMatt-zzzI don't think that's true though. After the Covenant civil war in HALO 3, there was plenty of room for conflict. I remember something about the Arbiter going home to free his people. Earth is devastated, and humanity's off-earth colonies are mostly destroyed. Politicians would probably want to distract from that with a war, and various former covenant factions would also see Earth as a good target, as most of their military was destroyed. If the Arbiter is successful, Earth would also have a good ally, but would still be in a weak position overall.
But for some reason 343 wrote post war UNSC to be pretty dam strong in halo 4 and 5, and then tried to walk that back in halo infinite but it doesn't feel properly written. Not to mention how terrible the didact desgin and the promethean enemies were to fight. I still don't know how the hell frank got director from community manager?? Nepotism? It doesn't make sense, he wasn't even promoted from an actual development role and his contribution to halo 3s story was shaky at best and outright contradicted the story of that game outright.
Didn't think of that. I played halo wars and was like ok banished. Now I understand the people that didn't play that, oh man. Who the fuck is the banished?
dev team mostly consisting of inexperienced contract workers with weak direction… heavily rushed… confusing and poorly maintained pr… yknow, this sounds an awful lot like what’s been going on with the sonic series for the past decade or so
The Halo games formed a core part of my childhood memories. The Halo 2 beta remains the beta I have played the most in my life. They were the games that lead to the “There was a day when it was the last time you and friends were all together having the best gaming of your young lives and you didn’t even know it” experience. I feel bad for younger gamers who couldn’t be there and instead have … this.
The issue is: It is not the platform it was meant to be. The engine is a shitshow, everyone with experience in programming and engines would have been able to tell the management that it is not a good idea to re-re-re-re-re-re-invent the wheel but here we are: A half functioning wheel but it is all theirs, congratulations!
Ive never stopped. Halo is my favorite franchise and even though it was poorly managed i feel this is the best multiplayer has ever felt. The campaign wasn't too bad either.
It's always amazing to see someone mention game feel/physics and a user's expectation of them based on the franchise they are playing. It is something only someone who really plays the game can understand and is rarely mentioned in analysis. A game can "Feel" right/wrong depending on so many factors and Halo Infinite definitely missed a lot of marks when it came to "Feeling like Halo" Cheers for this episode mate!
I felt much the same trying to go from UT2k4 to UT3 and the dead in the water UT4, while there were changes between 99 and 2k4 for the most part it was similar enough, 2k4 mostly added more dodging and air movement which led to a lot more verticality to maps, it was divisive to the 99 playerbase at first but in the end it was a pretty easy jump and most people ended up liking it just as well. 2k4 to UT3/UT4 was a MASSIVE change in game-play though, they felt more like CoD/Battlefield physics with some Gears of War thrown in, everything felt bulky and heavy, like you were glued to the ground killing most of the high speed movement and freedom of the previous games, even the vehicles felt super heavy and floaty with so much inertia they were hard to control. the grounded combat, and bulky feel just made the whole game feel slow and clunky. (coming from a game where you could double jump off a wall kick and backflip while sniping) It's like they saw this other player base and wanted it, completely forgetting they already had a huge player base that was desperately awaiting a new game and making the game ONLY for the new players they wanted to draw in. You kinda see that a lot here too, it looks like they wanted to make a game to check off a bunch of boxes for the player base they wanted to "steal", and completely forgot to make a halo game for their existing halo fans, assuming they'll all buy it anyways. No long term thought, only caring about initial sales and micro-transactions, basically not caring if it kills the game so long as immediate profit is made. It's the problem with the management being paid bonuses on cycles shorter than the game dev/release span itself, if they cut corners, save a ton of money, and make lots of initial profit, their 6 month review is GLOWING, then they can cash out, move to another project and do the same again, these companies just never look more than a few months out prifit-wise so long term failure essentially becomes an invisible problem, all they see is that someone, maybe not even the person actually responsible, had a bad quarter, so they fire all the employees of that subsidiary and move the management to a new project. The corporate cycle SUCKS and it's not a healthy way to make good games.
Yeah you are right about M$ and contractors. I started my career in the gaming industry at Microsoft and had an Orange (temp) badge Its almost like a two class system. Blue badges get discounts, can ride the Microsoft bus, can use the food court for cheaper, attend launch parties etc Orange badges can have free mountain dew and coffee lol
Think this also happens at some other studios which honestly makes it more awful. I hate the division of people into separate classes or castes like this.
@@winstonsmith3703 yeah well this industry is very derivative for lack of a better term, they see one company being successful so they model their business off of it or someone leaves and starts their own thing with the same philosophy I hope it gets better as time goes on but it's something we have to actively keep an eye on as an industry
This is why people have to unionize. Much love to all of you. As a union rep and chairman of a works council in Germany I'm always horrified by the stories of US workers.
I’ve never experienced Halo before this game, and after finishing the campaign on Legendary and spending a couple of hours in the multiplayer I decided to try out MCC. I enjoyed my time with Infinite, the guns felt great, abilities were fun to use, and I liked how Chief interacted with the Pilot and Weapon, but after playing some of the other games I’ve released how half baked it was in comparison to games that released over 2 decades ago
I'm not a fan of FPS's but I have a wholesome college memory (c.2005) connected to Halo, in an evening class I took called "Philosophy of Videogames". Yes, it's exactly what it sounded like. The prof was this really cool, laid back lady, and during post-lecture discussions we found out she had never played Halo. It was spring 2005, so Halo 2 had just released and was DOMINATING EVERYTHING. So on the last night of class after we were done taking our final, a couple of guys in the class brought in their XBoxes, hooked one up to the in-class projector, and spent the rest of the class period (and AFTER since it was a night class) teaching the prof how to play Halo 2. That has always seemed just so WHOLESOME to me, and the fact that none of the guys in class mocked or looked down on her for not playing FPS's or Halo the way that so many toxic gaming dudebros would. They knew she was interested in learning, so they took the time to teach her and everybody had a fantastic time.
That was the beauty of the first 3 halo games. They were social games. Thats what made them so great. And honestly one of the last social games. You could maybe count cod, but that was more of an online game rather than a social game, (similar but not the same)
The old Halo soundtrack truely was something divine. I remember one time driving home from university and blasting the warthog run song through my radio as I was doing 120 km/h on the highway, or the time after getting off work at midnight and playing the iconic ODST piano song as I walked to my car across the massive parking lot. Great times
I will forget how excited I was for halo 5 after seeing the trailers with Locke and Chief both about to finish each other off. I also saw the Halo Nightfall and listen to the Hunt the Truth Podcast in preparation for when the game came out. Only to find out the story was nothing like what the trailers had showed and what they lead us to believe and I will never forget how cheated I felt after having played the game. The false marketing and podcasts and trailers were pointless and didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. I still get upset even to this day. I swear 343 studios was built on top of an Indian burial ground or something with all the bad things that have come since they’ve been in charge of Halo
Im glad you pointed this out, I think this was where I can actually say that I genuinely lost interest in halo, the hunt the truth Audio, the whole halo 5 ad campaign, the mystery of the guardians and how it potentially tied into mendicant bias it's was absolutely incredible. As a huge halo lore nerd *What a colossal letdown* that whole game was 😑 all of that juicy buildup and none of it meant anything!!! I was already fuming about how they killed the fucking didact of in a freaking comic (I mean seriously if you know the lore this guy should have been a thanos level threat) they wasted his potential. I didn't even play the halo infinite campaign which is crazy because I've bought every single halo except that one I truly didn't care anymore and from what I've seen from some youtubers lore wise I'm not really missing out 😕
Oh you’re not, trust me. Ever since 343 took over, the lore has become so convoluted and melodramatic that I just reading the books. My last straw was when Infinite had a chance to undo Cortana’s character assassination and not only didn’t, but doubled down on her being a mass murderer. I’m walking away from this franchise and remembering the good times. If Halo’s story is not rebooted and 343 additions to canon removed, I will NEVER turn back
@@ericlamb4501 well technically Ensemble studios made the first Halo wars and then 343 followed up with the sequel. I thought overall it was good. But they added The Banished to the series because I cause fighting Prometheans wasn’t as fun as the Covenant lol
I discovered online gaming back in 2008 and I remember telling all my friends that the franchises we love are going to be amazing in 10 to 20 years. Wtf happened ?!?!?!?!?!?!
This game is unique in that it's the worst experience I've ever had with a game I liked. My campaign save got corrupted about 80% of the way through. Meaning I would have had to start all over. Instead, I cut my losses and moved on. Really a shame.
I legit cried watching this - seeing all the past Halo games and remembering every little detail of each level, map, weapons, etc. that were shown off, only to then juxtapose that with Halo 4 onward and seeing how hard of a fall Halo had. Halo was my gateway drug into gaming, going from having a mild and passive interest to passionately loving what gaming has to offer. So I mentioned in the Community post for Halo Infinite about one of my all-time favorite moments in gaming, so I'll drop it here. It took place in Halo Reach. I was playing Grifball with my brother and one of his IRL friends online. I decided, for a laugh, I'd pull up a Macho Man Randy Savage soundboard on my laptop and put my mic next to the computer's speaker so that the soundboard sounds would be picked up on the mic. My brother knew what kind of shenanigans I was going to do, so we agreed to drop the party chat and stuck with the in-game chat for the laughs. One of the other players on our team had the bomb and was trying to arm it. In my infinite wisdom, I quickly played the soundbite of Macho Man Randy Savage's entrance music (specifically the first 30 or so seconds). Right when the crescendo was about to start at around the 10 second mark, they charged in and armed the bomb, which subsequently detonated and we won the round. It could not have been timed more perfectly. Everyone on the team were laughing their asses off, including the one who armed the bomb. To this day, it is still one of my most memorable moments in gaming.
Yeah. I got banned from Halo MCC community for criticising 343i. Reason was literally *“You don’t need to say anything. The implication was enough”*. It is a meme worthy tag-line for them
I feel like nobody else was disappointed by this but I was really letdown that 5 set up this massive conflict with Cortana controlling this army of unstoppable machines and all the outside material was saying she basically conquered the galaxy in a few days and then this game starts and all of that has already been taken care of off screen
Yet another game you covered that genuinly breaks my heart when it comes to games. Halo was LEGENDARY to me and my childhood as well as my dive into competitive gaming. Its the trials and tribulations starting all the way back in Halo 2 that led to me being global in CSGO and T500 in Overwatch. Halo infinite had so much promise pre-release and it was by far my most anticipated game. Thank you for covering this brother, im glad a true fan put a cap stone on this.
MCC is the shining light that can potentially save the Halo brand from permanent death. 343 has had 3 stabs at the apple so Microsoft tearing it down and rebuilding makes sense. Really hope to see halo return to greatness some day. Forge team definitely deserves props too.
Thank you for mentioning some of the struggles solo players go through in Halo's matchmaking. A system that at least when possible matches full parties against other full parties would be quite nice. Any long time Halo player can tell within a few minutes of a match if they're versing a full party. It's like the entire enemy team has a lock on your location at all times, because they do, because they're in a party and telling each other. And fair enough, I'm glad Halo has always rewarded good communication, but it does create an unfair advantage against a team of solo players. The tagging system in Halo Infinite was a step in the right direction, and I've actually been able to just barely win some games against full teams by obsessively tagging every single enemy I spot, with my team realising and starting to coordinate attacks even while not in voice chat. But the tagging system combined with some more precise matchmaking would be chef's kiss. Ultimately you will never be able to remove this disadvantage (nor should you, skilled teams should be rewarded), but it can be mitigated in a fair way.
This exactly here. Hell, I still maintain the only time I've ever had a decent MM experience for the lifespan of the game was Halo2. H3 and onwards you always knew as a solo player when you were up against a team pretty quickly which then degenerated into a stomping match. I bounced quite hard off H4/5 and never even gave Infinite a go but I came back to MCC about a year after its initial release issues put me well off and had a good few years worth of gaming through it until the MM setup seemed to flip a switch and suddenly I was only ever matched against full teams with my team consisting of folks that had only just picked the game up. So I just gave up. If they can solve that issue I may be back, but I doubt it.
I remember the day halo died for my group of friends. We played halo reach hard and was all excited for halo 4.... the game was so bad that half the group went psn and never looked back. Rest quickly went offline and never heard of them. Its amazing how 343 destroyed an entire gaming clan in one game haha 😂
Halo4 was such a betrayal I sold my Xbox and stopped playing games. If it weren't for Titanfall I probably wouldn't have picked up the hobby ever again.
They had -a lead sandbox designer who didn’t like halo’s campaigns and didn’t care for bungie’s way of balancing a sandbox -a project lead who couldn’t articulate his vision and didn’t quite know what kind of game he wanted it to be -a monetization head who wanted as much of the game to be monetized as humanly possible to the point he removed campaign rewards since it was too much free content for playing -a narrative lead who was actively disinterested in halo’s past and wanted the game more like his Batman games -a studio culture of segmentation, jealousy, rivalry with fellow workers, etc that leads to bad communication and disfunction -Bungie’s codebase that they did such a poor job of maintaining since 2012 that it became a buggy, unfinished mess to build games with. What could go wrong?
I felt an indescribable anger seeing this title. I had completely erased this garbage from memory and now I'm reminded it exists. That being said... this will surely be another great video.
Insert general "We have learned From Past mistakes" says 343 while they clearly haven't. I mean how many times i have heard having a "10 year" plan being an excuse for general mismanagement and underdelivering. It's also a bit sad for those games as they cannot maintain a playerbase due to not having enough engaging content for people to stick around for.
Rarely do I get the validation for feeling so out of wack for a game than I did here. I wish it could've been better. But we're here now. I miss Halo and I wish 343 didn't fumble as hard as they did.
I think its really understated the damage Frank Oconnor did to Halo, that man had neither the right nor the experience to lead the franchise yet he went from community manager to franchise director...
Damn, this one makes me so sad.. I always appreciate how much care you give to these. I hope for a better future for Halo. Infinite was so depressing to me.
Yeah I saw the old art style return and the aesthetics were on point but man. Bag fumbled. That and even on the f2p multiplayer the cosmetics were a low blow for me. It sucked seeing MTX when I could just as easily boot up reach and have a whole catalogue of cool spartan armor unlocked just by playing the game. Hate how the bar has been lowered so severely.
I can tell how much this video meant to you. I was never a Halo guy, even when it was at its best, but I always respected how much it meant for gaming. We all have a game franchise that jumped off a cliff (Borderlands was big for me), but I don't envy the decades-long Halo fans just wanting to feel what Bungie once gave them. Even when it came to camping outside a Game Stop the night of release, there was just so much passion in and around it. Great work as always, but specifically on this one!
It took me all of 5 minutes to realize the game was a bad Halo when "Slayer" wasn't even a gamemode. 343 have absolutely no clue what makes a good Halo game 🤦♂️🤦♂️
This is to be expected when a creative effort is led by a corporate committee instead of someone with artistic talent. I only wonder how often the phrase "Of course they'll buy it; it's Halo" were uttered in corner offices.
I'm old. "Free to Play" just says to me "mostly teenagers" and I didn't even like myself as a teenagers, so what chance do I have with teenage strangers from a different generation? Also, if the game is free, who cares if your account gets banned for cheating? Apparently I have this game in some PC package with all the old Halo games. Think I'll just play the old Halo games without the cheating assholes spoiling it. It's like that, and that's the way it is.
Battle passes are the progression system they cut out of the game and sell it back to you. Like buying a car off a lot and them selling you the transmission as an added option.
I'm at the point where Imma just skip the next Halo game even if its good. 343 is just too smug for me to have any faith in them not to fuck it up and I am sick of giving them my money
Smug is the right word. The franchise has been in catastrophic decline since they took over, and their community managers to this day have the balls to mock fans outcry and disappointment. Unyshek is one of their most senior guys and he's one of the worst offenders.
Still play Halo to this day. And (hate to admit it but honestly I have to say it for the ones in the back of the room) despite Halo Infinite having a good start at launch, it just fell apart for all of us in front of our faces (even now I still feel robbed for that) I am still playing Halo to this day (both online and offline). Whatever happens into the future for Halo, I want Xbox to not abandon Halo, it’s there flagship title and will forever support (no not the monetization BS they’ve added) it till the very end. Thank you for making this video 💙
1:05:32 And that’s one of the things that’s the most frustrating, honestly, especially story-wise. As much as they fumble, they end up having *some* salvageable ideas that can actually be kind of creative, if they want to bother approaching them and fixing issues. But every time they get negative feedback, regardless of what the feedback is referring to they just…drop everything, including ideas that they could have kept and improved upon (like Jul Mdama or the Didact), which is why we’ve got this tired “villain of the week” cliche going on with every single game. Or why elements that were actually really cool, like the Swords of Sanghelios (and longtime Halo series fan favorite the *Arbiter,* for fuck’s sake the Arbiter) end up getting sent to plot purgatory for years, only for 343 to finally realize people actually liked them and try to pick them back up when it’s already too late (which it looks like they’re attempting now).
Halo isn't made for us original fans anymore. Symptomatic of modern art as a whole; gaming is more about corporate moneymaking, hence the "live service" model. Delivering a finished product made by passionate developers, which ironically enhances longevity for many of us, is no more. The focus is on Gen Z; attracting new fans with short attention spans who want a flashy, quick dopamine hit, and then keeping them spending money with more and more monetisation. Basically, video games in the smartphone/mobile game era are not made like they were before.
3:33 It was clear that 343 didn't like the Halo franchise when Halo 4 introduced new replacement main cast characters, Halo 5 had Cortana have a meltdown (yup, mentioned around 9:03) and Infinite had Master Chief beaten mysteriously offscreen in the first cutscene. My guess is that they also convinced Microsoft to greenlight the Halo TV show, complete with cucking fetish from the writer.
No doubt 343 greenlit the absolute dumpster fire that was the Halo live action series. Shortly before the show's release, Frank O Conner in an interview was gloating about he had an eye for selecting the best Halo projects to be made. This was where his "It's like porn." comment came from. And Kiki Wolfkill had a direct hand in the show's development being one of the producers. So, I chalk up the Halo live action series as another complete fumble to 343's awful track record with Halo.
Majority of the devs from bungie moved over to 343 when 343 was formed so I don’t understand how 343 could hate halo when introducing halo 4 when a lot of the devs worked on the game for years prior.
I'll miss you Halo, I spent hundreds of hours in Halo 3 custom games, boosted multiple of my friends through the legendary campaign and relentlessly played multiplayer. So many great moments when I was at school, having the best time of my life with my friends and never knowing it. Thanks, Bungie for all the fish and GG 343.
I wish I could get a high paying superfluous job based on projects I was associated with in the past, taking no account of my individual skillset or talents... Sigh.
I enjoyed every second of this. As someone whose last Halo was on 360 and enjoyed it way more than my PlayStation roots would probably like, I always wonder why the fan base got so quiet over the years. Your personal input in this video brought back nostalgia & also introduced the frustrations of the fanbase immaculately. Praying for a nexus in gaming in the next few years where player enjoyment is the key focus.
Jokes aside, yestarday decided to install and try the multiplayer again and much to my surprise I really enjoyed playing the game. Everything felt just right - the movement, shooting, different added maps, interface (swapped to Lime/Purple). For the first time I actually feel that the game feels good to play. Don't get me wrong, the game for me was dead up until yestarday, but now it feels like a game worth playing - the quickplay multiplayer aspect that is.
Them taking out classic weapons like the magnum, them killing one of THE coolest villains the series has had in the big bad brute from halo wars 2, the progression, customization, maps, and gross physics made me quite super quick. I hope Microsoft gives Halo to another studio and we get a return to form. 😢
9:23 The skill level did NOT increase with bilateral movement in 5 purely for the reason that the "more advanced movement" devolved it into more of a twitch shooter that didnt even have the same skill cieling as other twitch shooters. Suspending you in midair with hitscan whenever you want to get free kills over a high ledge isnt advanced. Having an escalating gun fight where you can traverse the environment while fighting is advanced, which is what classic does; the ability to run AND gun, not run OR gun like 5. Also the maps couldnt accomodate for players changing speeds constantly so they were often unbalanced. Thats why the multiplayer was largely dead other then warzone and community servers
Great video! I relate a lot to your Halo experience and timeline. I played Halo 1 and 2 prior to middle school at my friend’s house growing up over the summers prior to the release of Halo 3. Halo 3 released and I was able to convince my parents to get me an Xbox and Halo for Christmas when I was in middle school at the time. It was my first online experience and I was hooked on the social and ranked features with my friends, reaching rank 45 on lone wolves. Reach I enjoyed, but only played for three months or so due to the limited scope of maps and ranked progression compared to 3. Fast Forward to Halo 4 and I remember being really hyped to play it with my college friends by this point. Although flawed, Halo 4 was still fun for us to play together socially all of our freshman year. My biggest gripes were it was too casual, tried to copy COD with load outs, and the story relied too much on outside sources like books for average people to understand it. I ended up getting Halo 5 and it was very polarizing for me. On one hand I struggled to even finish the campaign due to its hard to follow story and subpar gameplay. On the other hand, I absolutely loved multiplayer in that game since I really got into the ranked matches in addition to enjoying the social features like Warzone as well. I ended up putting 18 days worth of playtime in multiplayer in Halo 5 since it became my go to video game to relax to while finishing out college. I ended up being a consistent diamond level player and even managed to make online friends of a similar skill to consistently play with. Fast forward to Halo Infinite and it really felt like the death blow to the franchise even to a longtime fan like me. Multiplayer at first seemed promising but lacked any content and had a very poor progression system as you pointed out. In addition, the playlist selection was the most limited one of any halo on release. The decision to not include slayer and team slayer only playlists baffles me. I played the campaign and enjoyed myself, but it felt well below what was promised to fans such as having diverse biomes. I just feel like the game was soulless and lacked anything to keep me interested anymore. End of story, but wanted to share my thoughts since your video’s points matched my experience as a longtime fan as well.
I wasn't born early enough to watch Halo at its peak, but I can't deny the unfathomable reach and impact it made on the internet culture. If your game is strong enough to get NEWS coverage of people lining up in Times Square JUST so they can purchase your game, you know you hit it big. The lessons Halo taught us, intentionally with its stories and unintentionally with its development history, is something to recognize and to remember for years to come. Great work Detective! No clue what the future holds for this franchise, but I hope someone out there keeps it from hanging the coat and hat up (whatever that means lol) P.S. Around 3:40, I couldn't help but hear police/emergency service sirens coming from your recording lol. Might need to keep an eye out for those next time ;)
The single player co-op was really bad. Open world made it feel like a chore and the game had no urgency. Go here, shoot stuff and click beacon, see cutscene, fight boss. Rinse and Repeat
SBMM is a cancer on all FPS, it only serves to make Care Bears feel safe from the dudes who bullied them. When in fact it makes all matches sweaty and grinds everyone to dust
One of the saddest memories I have as a Halo fan was day 1 of Halo 5 mid campaign I just stopped mid level coming to the realisation that for hours straight I just hadnt felt a flicker of fun or interest, that was the day for me I knew Halo was not going to be ok
*They're running victory laps without having completed the course in the first place!* Man, there have have been so many similar examples in other companies and disciplines. This is how empires fall.
The colorful MCC clips just showcased how hilariously slapstick those games were, and why dying was often funny enough to not frustrate. What a great franchise unfortunately left to languish in the mires of Microsoft's greed.
Thanks for this detailed report. When looking at the whole picture it seems this game was a symptom of a problem present in most software related companies nowadays: automate, outsource and streamline as much a possible, always with profit as the main goal. Videogames are half business half art and in this case the business part was given more importance. Kinda funny how at the same time Bungie started to neglect Destiny 2. Live service games are a mistake. (Also, wtf is wrong with Frank O'Connor mentioning porn out of the blue on an interview? Sir, this is a Wendy's, chill)
Seeing Halo what it is now, is a bit sad really. I still remember play a computer that wasn't even strong enough to play Halo 1 and render glass without being a white texture. Alas I still miss those days.
Halo Infinite is a textbook example of being intentionally designed to be a minimal viable product, in both the Campaign and MP. It seems like the longer we've gone in the MTX era of games, more people than ever are apathetic but accepting of manipulative corporate game design.
I wonder when the time will come that battlepasses, or even live services, are seen as absolutely unacceptable in the wider gaming scope as loot boxes had been after the monumental disaster that was Battlefront 2...
@@NotTheGaslighterif, not when... The reason for the loot box debacle was that it resulted in government intervention and as a result mainstream media attention
i realized after halo 4 that 343 wasn't suited for making halo games and the story of halo 5 told me they have no clue what they are doing. Edit: even with the initial hype of infinite, I wasn’t buying that it would last.
I never really enjoyed the "feel" of 343's Halo games ever since their maps first starting appearing in Halo Reach, they just felt amateurish, a fanboy sticking in lots of "cool stuff'" with no concept on balance. But it's bizarre Microsoft never let Rare have a go at a Halo title, especially as they've worked In the background of several of them.
God I remember when they announced Halo was going to be delayed and people were saying "This is good, I'd rather wait for a great game than get a bad game early". And then the game came out and it still was bad. Honestly, big companies use the "promise something great, release a worse product than you promised, promise to make it better later, keep making promises until everyone forgets, quietly sweep the game under the rug, start work on new project that you promise will be great" tactic a lot.
This hurt considering I grew up playing these games with my friends and little brothers. We held end of year halo tournaments in school back in the day just before summer break. Simpler times.
Another reminder that it is never good to become an obsessive fanboy of corporate product. Corporations do not care about what they are making, and they only care about your money.
If you match up the timeline for the Halos around the 2000s with 2020, right now we should be hyped for the third installment and finalizing the story. But instead we're talking about the game from basically 4 years ago and how it barely got out the gate, as well as not having prospects to continue the story.
We’ll done. There’s so much more to tell.
Thanks for the kind words, massive fan (obviously). I am getting more information even after the video, and I bet that's still not enough.
You know it's bad when Marty ODonnell is agreeing with the video
I love you Marty!
Marty dogging on infinite is quite telling of this whole situation
@@nerdSlayerstudioss is it good or bad information, detective?
You know what else destroys replayability, the inability to replay levels until one year post release
Also an open world with the same biome throughout. No snow levels, desert levels, swamp levels, etc. No flying vehicle with passengers (hornet or falcon).
The open world took out any of the weight that doing the side quests could have had.
Rescuing generic marine squad 3 wasn't something that could impact the story, since players might have missed it.
So there were no named marines to rescue, no base to bring them back to, no central base to defend against the Banished attacks.
People replay open world games that make you feel like you are making a difference in the open world, at your own pace. Unlocking another firebase, or killing another boss off the beaten path, does not accomplish that.
@@ayybe7894 I do say one thing I don't like about the campaign that you only play on a single biome while most Halo games puts you in multiple biomes like from Halo 3. It definitely felt less like an open world by only sticking to a single biome. The campaign dlcs would've been a perfect opportunity to include more biomes for you to play on.
I think lack of PC optimization was worst thing with them freemium model for mp. I bought a high spec notebook, game ran at 20fps on low with its dated graphics.
I've heard a lot of issue from Halo infinite, but you couldn't even replay levels??????
@@cameronmckillop6448 yey, only way to was start a new save and do a new game
Boeing tried the "fire everyone and hire contract workers" trick too. It worked even less well for them and has nearly destroyed the company. Turns out things like "institutional knowledge" and "working knowledge of the code base" and "quality control" are all kinda important.
diversity indian hires were declared "engineerers" writing software for keeping 747 flying for $10/hour until one of them fell out of the sky. Go look up how much boeing paid their indian contractors lol.
5 years at Boeing cured me of any desire to remain in the aviation industry.
It why people that are always at arm charge length never understand why modder seem to be more capable then the actual devs. Most committed modder have been working with the code for vastly loger then the contractors.
Yeah, without full-time veteran workers, theres never a healthy "Master-Assistant"-type of work relationship going, everyone is essentially just an Assistant who has to learn everything from scratch.
My friend worked for Boeing as a contract worker for over ten years. Every time we hung out there were always new horror stories, painful bullshit, 1+1=fish nonsense. He left about a year ago now and that had a lot of interesting consequences for the company.
Heck the part about the badges in the video reminded me of what he told me too. Blue badges were Boeing employees, but he was a Grey badge. In Boeing being a Grey badge meant you barely qualified as a human being as far as company policy was concerned. It was such shit.
It still shocks me to this day how much 343 fumbled the bag
It takes a very special kind of incompetence to squander the opportunity of both Battlefield and Call of Duty being very poorly rated in the same year. Their major competitiors were floundering and they still screwed up.
What shocks me even more is the fact that people *still* defend that sad excuse of a company.
@@Calvin_Coolage if anything what is painful isn't halo infinite current state...its the "what ifs" that really get the feels going.
Halo infinite could of revived the entire arena shooter genre if it has gotten its act together earlier or just had a decent launch in general.
Now we are still stuck with BRs and Tactical shooters dominating the fps genre and the indie boomer shooters and fpses still being gold.
At this point indie fpses have become more polished then triple A ones.
343 is much like modern Blizzard; living on the remnants of nostalgic goodwill from past long gone generations.
well when you look at the shitty state of aaa gaming, it really shouldn't be that shocking. look at all the aaa disasters we've had over the last few years. halo infinite, battlefield 2042, redfall, last of us on pc, star wars jedi survivor on pc, anthem, overwatch 2, gta definitive edition, forspoken, pokemon scarlet/violet. after so many aaa duds, it's really hard to have faith in our big name companies and is why the indie devs are in their golden age right now
i'm not nearly the die hard Halo fan that you are, but i do find it sad that there's younger gamers who will only know Halo from 4, 5 and this. It's crazy that there are people out there who don't realize just how important Halo was at one point. It legit feels like a niche franchise nowadays.
Imagine being a kid and your first steps into gaming being all microtransactions, loot boxes, live service games
Its weird because the new god of war games kinda had that impact with the vast majority of people having not even played the old god of war games
Well at least god of war stayed good all this time with only 2 bad-ish spinoff games
Unlike halo with has been bad for more then a decade
@@valletas Those spinoffs were for the psp, so although they weren't as good as the mainline games, they were pretty decent. To this day i am still pissed that sony stopped supporting the psp, probably the best handheld gaming device that has ever been released, you had games like metal gear solid portable ops, peace walker and siphon filter. If you modded it you could even play older PS1 and PS2 games like manhunt, silent hill, parasite eve 1/2, twisted metal and dino crisis.
The PSP go and PSP vita are what killed the platform and i hope sony eventually goes back to good handheld again but i doubt it after the recent reveal of the Q, which is just a terrible device that isn't even a portable device.
@@evedael i was talking about chains of olympus... And ascension
Ghost of sparda is really freaking good
@@evedael tough i entirely agree with you
My psp broke last year and i still trying to get the money to finally fix it i miss the thing
I find it absolutely mind-boggling that they apparently put their focus completely on the multiplayer experience and than fall flat on even that.
That's what happens when you try to make a hyper competitive game instead of focusing on what made the old ones good.
@@Aether-Entropy I hate how the fanbase kinda is easy to make happy: ''We want cool and fun things like the old games had''
343: ok, guys, lets just NOT do that and do something to another audience (which not even these ''new audience'' is gonna like)
I'm not much of a Halo or Bungie fan in general, but after watching Mandalore's deep dive into a lot of their early games it's easy to see why Halo became the game it did. No matter how you liked to play Bungie put passion into it, but just like Marathon or Myth, there was a purpose for the game to exist. It is easy to see at least Infinite as nothing but a corporate game, like many sequels or remakes now, just to make a bottom line.
Unfortunately even bungie has fallen to greed, look at the micro transaction hell that has become of destiny 2
@@leviticusprime4904exactly. that’s almost a even sadder fate than watching Halo wither away. seeing Bungie become so invested in monetization and live service bullshit.
when I saw they were making a new entry in the marathon series, I was so fucking happy about the idea of Bungie making an actual game again.. another world to get lost in. then I see it’s another free to play live service like Destiny…
@@leviticusprime4904 I mean, I can't say D2's monetization isn't sketch or that it hasn't harmed the game, but there's still a lot of good in there. Not always as reliably high quality as I'd like, but you can see the old Bungie passion for storytelling and gameplay shining through, it just gets overshadowed sometimes by extremely dubious microtransactions.
They're not yet at a point where I'd say they actually outright ruin the experience, but they definitely weaken it, and I do have a bit of worry for how Marathon will turn out.
Basically, I'm keeping my hopes high that it'll be another solid game with Bungie's signature wonderful gunplay and settings, but not preordering or getting too hyped. Bungie stumbles more than I'd like, but they generally pull themselves together in the end, and I hope they manage to overcome the metaphorical siren song of short-term profit optimization that's dragged so many AAA studios into the rocks. Only time will tell.
Bungie doesn’t make Halo, it’s 343 making all of them after Halo 4
Bungie now is Destiny 2
If you're younger and reading this, believe me when I say that the glory days of Halo 2 and 3 were one of those things you just had to be there for. I know the gameplay looks and probably feels dated, but back then people played these games for years
Revolutionary media always looks dated because everyone afterward copies it and makes it look trite in retrospect.
yup. played Halo 3 for like 10+ years until Infinite
Probably the big problem with halo infinite was how dated it feels to the new generation, old school console movement and shooting just dont do it for people anymore
@@chost-059 Yup. When I saw the gameplay, I thought "nope, not a market killer. This thing handles like a rusty truck compared to everything else". Played it a bit, was not impressed, left quickly.
@@chost-059 "Advanced Movement". Its incorporation started in Reach and that is when the fanbase started to split. Advanced movement or not having it can work on either side, you just need to commit to one. They stuck to both and did it poorly.
I'll never forget walking into GameStop, and they had the demo of Halo 1, for everyone to play. And the level was "Silent Cartographer". I was maybe 10 years old. That level blew my mind when I was a child.
I remember playing that level over and over again in my school´s computers, and even other kids would come just to watch you play, it was a different time.
I was ten too when it was released. I just replayed the halo campaign on legendary on PC. It was freaking exhilarating! I can’t believe that game, just amazing
Its def the best halo level, out of all halo levels in the whole franchise
I remember playing a Halo 1 demo kiosk with my cousin, and have a crowd of people watching just amazed. Good memories
the most classic level from CE ever, i'll always love CE more than any other Halo game
To think that infection took 2 whole ass years to be included is absolutely
Is it gonna take YOU 2 whole ass years to complete this comment
Is it gonna take YOU 2 whole ass years to complete this comment
This seems to have been a personally important project to you and I enjoyed the whole hour of it.
I'm glad. It was and is. I love it and hate the video because I love Halo so much.
@Nerdslayergaming preach it brother.
It's been dead since Reach. Enjoying the last drops of competitive and forge being good enough back then was the last bits for me.
343 games are the absolute worst among the fps genre.
This one hurt. - Something you left out was that Custom Games were pretty broken on launch, so even if you got a lobby together, something as simple as changing the starting weapons would often fail to save. You also couldn't set starting equipment, which was one of the main new features. Any fun gametype centered around using grapplehook went out the window.
When they finally DID add the custom game browser, it was "beta" and hidden in a community tab. The UI is super limited compared to the Halo 1 PC server browser, with the inability to sort by active player count WHILE seeing ping.
Loading into custom games with the browser also frequently took forever or failed outright.
I played Halo 3 religiously from its release to 2013, it was basically all I played. I used to post on a forum a decade ago called NeoGAF. There was a Halo community thread that had been running for years. I posted in there frequently and one of the regulars there was Frank O'Connor. I knew even back then that Halo was not in good hands. Whenever any sort of criticism or concern was raised he would almost always disregard it. One of the main things I remember was how against a ranking system he was because "it encouraged boosting" which was insane to me because of how integral ranked was in Halo.
I have heard of NeoGAF, that's where Maxor downloaded the program allowing him to up the resolution on his MGR Footage to 4K
He was right, Halo 2 was infested with kids disconnecting the other team just to get a higher number.
Hindsight is 20 : 20 and all but some of the decisions made for Infinite were so obviously going to go down like a lead balloon it makes you wonder what 343 were thinking.
The tough handover and some of the leads not liking the franchise does explain their mindset a lot, especially combined with the ‘gotta push that monetisation’ ethos.
C&C fans know this issue
I mean thing went wrong right from Halo 4 onward, its not really hindsight anymore that 343 has some problems.
@@RevkorI still hope for a CnC game that picks up after 3.
Or Generals 2.
Was never a Halo fan, but I definitely have remorse for my fellow gamers who lost a great love.
Here's one for the fallen comrades!
🥃
It will never make sense to any of us. This franchise was an absolute Juggernaut. It's almost imposible to comprehend how much effort it would take to kill something so powerful but they did it...
May i ask why just genuinely curious?
@@Kannabi420 We have seen this too many times across the board, and not only in the video gaming industry. Activision-Blizzard is perhaps the greatest and most depressing 'how the mighty have fallen' example of that case, and I was not even a Blizzard fan from the beginning.
In every case, they all had success earned or inherited to them. But eventually greed, complacency and incompetence had led them to squander it all to their long-term detriment.
As someone who just got into halo like 3 months ago with Halo CE, I agree.
You SHOULD gatekeep. The widespread incompetence in the gaming industry of late is partially because we don't gatekeep.
There was a rumour that the Slip Space engine was made by multiple teams of contract workers with none of the outgoing teams sharing notes with the incoming ones so each team that came in just did their own thing to the engine resulting in it being a steaming pile of taped together shit and none of the main team at 343 knew how to use it.
its fascinating how 343 f**ked up, not once, not twice, but every single time
i used to hate microsoft, but now im just genuinely feel sad for them
like did they know the definition of insanity?
I'm very impressed on the depth of your sources for these sorts of things! As someone who worked QA on Infinite during the release window, I think the only thing missing from this overview is a greater emphasis on just how much the contract employee system (which in their very weak defense is often a Microsoft-at-large thing and not at all unique to 343) impacts workflow. The employee churn in that place is absurd, not helped by the fact that in many cases replacement employees are either not found until after the previous ones have left, or they're hired at lower tiers of their positions, meaning training the incoming employees on whatever the old ones know is next to impossible, and so everyone has to spend months of their time getting up to speed before they can properly help push things forward. In some cases, it can mean the full functionality of custom tools or automation features can be more or less lost entirely as they're too complex to teach in a hurry and impossible for floundering newbies to discover for themselves. Add onto that the fact that certain divisions (especially QA) are heavily sub-divided into feature groups that barely talk to each other, and it's a whole lot of hands not knowing what the other ones are doing.
thanks for the information :)
@@nerdSlayerstudiossfight me
“Death of a franchise”. Damn straight.
So frank o'connor got the director position because of the ignorance of the producers who looked no further than "ex bungie employee"?
They put the janitor in charge of lore and story.
I have to say: The point you made on Halo Infinite's physics was spot on. It has been years since i played Halo 3, but I can still imagine the exact angles it would take to make each vehicle blow up or bounce off of eachother, or even the way i would need to hold my left joystick to recover from a barrel-roll. Infinite cannot compete.
So they’re just supposed to copy physics from Halo 3? lol Halo 3 most certainly did not have realistic physics so I would assume they want you to just keep copying it.
@@alexschneider8494 Realistic physics aren't necessarily fun physics. I'd rather have predictable physics so that you can recover from bad tumbles rather than just praying.
@@alexschneider8494 Yes, I want only realism in my sci-fi game. Better yet, they should make us fill the gas on our warthogs and we should lose spare bullets in our magazines on reloads. I'd also like it if they implemented a hunger and thirst system in the game 🤡
@KK-ct6ju idk... infinite slowly ended up dissapointing me but the physics never bothered me.
@@deeman010gdjthe game literally had terrible vehicle physics and desync for like 6 months until they released a couple of speculative fixes
Oh man - This one is gonna hurt as much as Asheron's Call and City of Heroes.
Well I don't know about Asheron's Call but City of Heroes is still alive and well if you ever feel the need to go an play.
I was on Frostfell for AC, how about you/y'all?
@@stumpfreakI was actually in AC beta 1 all the way to shut down. I tinkered with emulators for a little bit but I just couldn't get back into it full time after how much I was crushed when AC retail shut down. Harvestgain was my main stomping grounds while also fooling around on Darktide in the old Blood days.
I know of the CoH emulator too but I guess it's the same as my AC emulator experience. One day I'd love to commit to one or the other full time seeing as modern day MMO's pale in comparison to what was the shining light of early MMO creation.
The most striking thing is seeing behind-the-scenes footage of 343i, those calling the shots are predominately corporate people who give off the impression that they have little knowledge and interest in video games, let alone the Halo franchise. They just see Halo as an asset from which they can create content to generate money.
Compare that with footage of Bungie creating Halo games 20 years ago. Even at the highest levels of the company, they were all video game enthusiasts just looking to make a game that they would want to play. On top of that, creating Halo games wasn't just a job for them. It was their passion project, Halo was their baby. Bungie had built the franchise from the ground up so took pride in their work as a result. This could be seen in the final product.
Who would have thought a "back to the roots" Halo game would end up on Death of a Game.
Kinda weird how a lot of these "Back to the roots" type AAA games have been popping up recently and i'm pretty sure a lot of them don't actually go back to their roots.
Really one of the saddest one of these for me so far. I already kinda gave up on Halo after 5, but Infinite gave me a sliver of hope that I hadn't had for the franchise in years. To see it be debased like this.....man. Halo 3 and Reach were literally the main games of my teenage years. I truly miss it.
Killing the golden goose and surviving on the few gold eggs that were half formed inside of it does not quality as success, in my book. But, I guees, from the point of view of extremely unqualified people it can be seen as an extraordinary result, far above expectations and therefore a success.
I knew people in both 343 and The Coalition, shipping Halo Infinite was such a big deal for Microsoft that after Gears 5 even the team at The Coalition got moved to the Infinite mines. When a completely different studio has to stop their multi-year long plans to come and rescue your game you really know the situation is dire, and it also shows how much the Halo franchise meant to Microsoft, there was no option to delay it more, that game finally had to ship. Essentially Halo Infinite impacted also Gears 5 post launch life too
Honestly I knew it was a bad start when you had to play a sequel to a strategy game spin-off to understand the fps story villains. At least you could give a little summary video for those of us who didn’t play those. I’ve read the books and that didn’t help at all with the enemies.
So true 😂 I was a little lost on the story when the game came out.
I guess It's pretty hard to create stakes that are remotely as interesting as the first trilogy, such as how the first set of games were about religious space aliens mistaking ancient doomsday devices as the start of the rapture.
@@SleepyMatt-zzzI don't think that's true though. After the Covenant civil war in HALO 3, there was plenty of room for conflict. I remember something about the Arbiter going home to free his people. Earth is devastated, and humanity's off-earth colonies are mostly destroyed. Politicians would probably want to distract from that with a war, and various former covenant factions would also see Earth as a good target, as most of their military was destroyed. If the Arbiter is successful, Earth would also have a good ally, but would still be in a weak position overall.
But for some reason 343 wrote post war UNSC to be pretty dam strong in halo 4 and 5, and then tried to walk that back in halo infinite but it doesn't feel properly written. Not to mention how terrible the didact desgin and the promethean enemies were to fight.
I still don't know how the hell frank got director from community manager?? Nepotism? It doesn't make sense, he wasn't even promoted from an actual development role and his contribution to halo 3s story was shaky at best and outright contradicted the story of that game outright.
Didn't think of that. I played halo wars and was like ok banished. Now I understand the people that didn't play that, oh man. Who the fuck is the banished?
Same.. I was lucky to know who the Banish were because I Always watch Halo cutscenes and UA-cam videos but I'd Never played Halo Wars 1&2 😅
dev team mostly consisting of inexperienced contract workers with weak direction… heavily rushed… confusing and poorly maintained pr…
yknow, this sounds an awful lot like what’s been going on with the sonic series for the past decade or so
The Halo games formed a core part of my childhood memories. The Halo 2 beta remains the beta I have played the most in my life.
They were the games that lead to the “There was a day when it was the last time you and friends were all together having the best gaming of your young lives and you didn’t even know it” experience.
I feel bad for younger gamers who couldn’t be there and instead have … this.
You played the Halo 2 beta? You worked at Bungie?
This one genuinely hurts my soul. Even if they fix it whose to say people will give it another chance
They already were given so many chances in these 10+ years.
I would when they make it a full halo game, sadly it looks like they still need 3 more years for that
The issue is: It is not the platform it was meant to be. The engine is a shitshow, everyone with experience in programming and engines would have been able to tell the management that it is not a good idea to re-re-re-re-re-re-invent the wheel but here we are: A half functioning wheel but it is all theirs, congratulations!
343 will never fix it, they are the embodiment of Guilty Spark.
Ive never stopped. Halo is my favorite franchise and even though it was poorly managed i feel this is the best multiplayer has ever felt. The campaign wasn't too bad either.
It's always amazing to see someone mention game feel/physics and a user's expectation of them based on the franchise they are playing.
It is something only someone who really plays the game can understand and is rarely mentioned in analysis.
A game can "Feel" right/wrong depending on so many factors and Halo Infinite definitely missed a lot of marks when it came to "Feeling like Halo"
Cheers for this episode mate!
I've never seen anyone mention it, glad you enjoyed it
I felt much the same trying to go from UT2k4 to UT3 and the dead in the water UT4, while there were changes between 99 and 2k4 for the most part it was similar enough, 2k4 mostly added more dodging and air movement which led to a lot more verticality to maps, it was divisive to the 99 playerbase at first but in the end it was a pretty easy jump and most people ended up liking it just as well. 2k4 to UT3/UT4 was a MASSIVE change in game-play though, they felt more like CoD/Battlefield physics with some Gears of War thrown in, everything felt bulky and heavy, like you were glued to the ground killing most of the high speed movement and freedom of the previous games, even the vehicles felt super heavy and floaty with so much inertia they were hard to control. the grounded combat, and bulky feel just made the whole game feel slow and clunky. (coming from a game where you could double jump off a wall kick and backflip while sniping) It's like they saw this other player base and wanted it, completely forgetting they already had a huge player base that was desperately awaiting a new game and making the game ONLY for the new players they wanted to draw in.
You kinda see that a lot here too, it looks like they wanted to make a game to check off a bunch of boxes for the player base they wanted to "steal", and completely forgot to make a halo game for their existing halo fans, assuming they'll all buy it anyways. No long term thought, only caring about initial sales and micro-transactions, basically not caring if it kills the game so long as immediate profit is made. It's the problem with the management being paid bonuses on cycles shorter than the game dev/release span itself, if they cut corners, save a ton of money, and make lots of initial profit, their 6 month review is GLOWING, then they can cash out, move to another project and do the same again, these companies just never look more than a few months out prifit-wise so long term failure essentially becomes an invisible problem, all they see is that someone, maybe not even the person actually responsible, had a bad quarter, so they fire all the employees of that subsidiary and move the management to a new project. The corporate cycle SUCKS and it's not a healthy way to make good games.
Yeah you are right about M$ and contractors. I started my career in the gaming industry at Microsoft and had an Orange (temp) badge
Its almost like a two class system. Blue badges get discounts, can ride the Microsoft bus, can use the food court for cheaper, attend launch parties etc
Orange badges can have free mountain dew and coffee lol
Think this also happens at some other studios which honestly makes it more awful. I hate the division of people into separate classes or castes like this.
@@winstonsmith3703 yeah well this industry is very derivative for lack of a better term, they see one company being successful so they model their business off of it or someone leaves and starts their own thing with the same philosophy
I hope it gets better as time goes on but it's something we have to actively keep an eye on as an industry
This is why people have to unionize.
Much love to all of you. As a union rep and chairman of a works council in Germany I'm always horrified by the stories of US workers.
Capitalism for you
I’ve never experienced Halo before this game, and after finishing the campaign on Legendary and spending a couple of hours in the multiplayer I decided to try out MCC.
I enjoyed my time with Infinite, the guns felt great, abilities were fun to use, and I liked how Chief interacted with the Pilot and Weapon, but after playing some of the other games I’ve released how half baked it was in comparison to games that released over 2 decades ago
Play mccs multiplayer with a controller though so you dont get into matches with people that will eat you alive every game
Notice how the marines could drive. Notice in infinite how when u call in a vehicle the marines get crushed when it lands 😂
I'm not a fan of FPS's but I have a wholesome college memory (c.2005) connected to Halo, in an evening class I took called "Philosophy of Videogames". Yes, it's exactly what it sounded like.
The prof was this really cool, laid back lady, and during post-lecture discussions we found out she had never played Halo. It was spring 2005, so Halo 2 had just released and was DOMINATING EVERYTHING.
So on the last night of class after we were done taking our final, a couple of guys in the class brought in their XBoxes, hooked one up to the in-class projector, and spent the rest of the class period (and AFTER since it was a night class) teaching the prof how to play Halo 2.
That has always seemed just so WHOLESOME to me, and the fact that none of the guys in class mocked or looked down on her for not playing FPS's or Halo the way that so many toxic gaming dudebros would. They knew she was interested in learning, so they took the time to teach her and everybody had a fantastic time.
That was the beauty of the first 3 halo games. They were social games. Thats what made them so great. And honestly one of the last social games. You could maybe count cod, but that was more of an online game rather than a social game, (similar but not the same)
The old Halo soundtrack truely was something divine. I remember one time driving home from university and blasting the warthog run song through my radio as I was doing 120 km/h on the highway, or the time after getting off work at midnight and playing the iconic ODST piano song as I walked to my car across the massive parking lot. Great times
i'll never forgive them for what they did to my childhood game franchise.
I will forget how excited I was for halo 5 after seeing the trailers with Locke and Chief both about to finish each other off. I also saw the Halo Nightfall and listen to the Hunt the Truth Podcast in preparation for when the game came out. Only to find out the story was nothing like what the trailers had showed and what they lead us to believe and I will never forget how cheated I felt after having played the game. The false marketing and podcasts and trailers were pointless and didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. I still get upset even to this day. I swear 343 studios was built on top of an Indian burial ground or something with all the bad things that have come since they’ve been in charge of Halo
Im glad you pointed this out, I think this was where I can actually say that I genuinely lost interest in halo, the hunt the truth Audio, the whole halo 5 ad campaign, the mystery of the guardians and how it potentially tied into mendicant bias it's was absolutely incredible.
As a huge halo lore nerd *What a colossal letdown* that whole game was 😑 all of that juicy buildup and none of it meant anything!!! I was already fuming about how they killed the fucking didact of in a freaking comic (I mean seriously if you know the lore this guy should have been a thanos level threat) they wasted his potential.
I didn't even play the halo infinite campaign which is crazy because I've bought every single halo except that one I truly didn't care anymore and from what I've seen from some youtubers lore wise I'm not really missing out 😕
Oh you’re not, trust me. Ever since 343 took over, the lore has become so convoluted and melodramatic that I just reading the books. My last straw was when Infinite had a chance to undo Cortana’s character assassination and not only didn’t, but doubled down on her being a mass murderer.
I’m walking away from this franchise and remembering the good times. If Halo’s story is not rebooted and 343 additions to canon removed, I will NEVER turn back
They made Halo Wars, that really should have been the first sign to anyone that these clowns have no idea what they're doing.
@@ericlamb4501 well technically Ensemble studios made the first Halo wars and then 343 followed up with the sequel. I thought overall it was good. But they added The Banished to the series because I cause fighting Prometheans wasn’t as fun as the Covenant lol
I discovered online gaming back in 2008 and I remember telling all my friends that the franchises we love are going to be amazing in 10 to 20 years. Wtf happened ?!?!?!?!?!?!
Anita Sarkisian happened.
Game Journalists felt threatened by #GamerGate
343 stayed true to their name. the villain to Halo
This game is unique in that it's the worst experience I've ever had with a game I liked. My campaign save got corrupted about 80% of the way through. Meaning I would have had to start all over. Instead, I cut my losses and moved on. Really a shame.
I legit cried watching this - seeing all the past Halo games and remembering every little detail of each level, map, weapons, etc. that were shown off, only to then juxtapose that with Halo 4 onward and seeing how hard of a fall Halo had. Halo was my gateway drug into gaming, going from having a mild and passive interest to passionately loving what gaming has to offer.
So I mentioned in the Community post for Halo Infinite about one of my all-time favorite moments in gaming, so I'll drop it here. It took place in Halo Reach. I was playing Grifball with my brother and one of his IRL friends online. I decided, for a laugh, I'd pull up a Macho Man Randy Savage soundboard on my laptop and put my mic next to the computer's speaker so that the soundboard sounds would be picked up on the mic. My brother knew what kind of shenanigans I was going to do, so we agreed to drop the party chat and stuck with the in-game chat for the laughs. One of the other players on our team had the bomb and was trying to arm it. In my infinite wisdom, I quickly played the soundbite of Macho Man Randy Savage's entrance music (specifically the first 30 or so seconds). Right when the crescendo was about to start at around the 10 second mark, they charged in and armed the bomb, which subsequently detonated and we won the round. It could not have been timed more perfectly. Everyone on the team were laughing their asses off, including the one who armed the bomb. To this day, it is still one of my most memorable moments in gaming.
Yeah. I got banned from Halo MCC community for criticising 343i. Reason was literally *“You don’t need to say anything. The implication was enough”*.
It is a meme worthy tag-line for them
I feel like nobody else was disappointed by this but I was really letdown that 5 set up this massive conflict with Cortana controlling this army of unstoppable machines and all the outside material was saying she basically conquered the galaxy in a few days and then this game starts and all of that has already been taken care of off screen
Yet another game you covered that genuinly breaks my heart when it comes to games. Halo was LEGENDARY to me and my childhood as well as my dive into competitive gaming. Its the trials and tribulations starting all the way back in Halo 2 that led to me being global in CSGO and T500 in Overwatch. Halo infinite had so much promise pre-release and it was by far my most anticipated game. Thank you for covering this brother, im glad a true fan put a cap stone on this.
MCC is the shining light that can potentially save the Halo brand from permanent death. 343 has had 3 stabs at the apple so Microsoft tearing it down and rebuilding makes sense.
Really hope to see halo return to greatness some day.
Forge team definitely deserves props too.
The mods available for MCC are amazing
Thank you for mentioning some of the struggles solo players go through in Halo's matchmaking. A system that at least when possible matches full parties against other full parties would be quite nice. Any long time Halo player can tell within a few minutes of a match if they're versing a full party. It's like the entire enemy team has a lock on your location at all times, because they do, because they're in a party and telling each other. And fair enough, I'm glad Halo has always rewarded good communication, but it does create an unfair advantage against a team of solo players. The tagging system in Halo Infinite was a step in the right direction, and I've actually been able to just barely win some games against full teams by obsessively tagging every single enemy I spot, with my team realising and starting to coordinate attacks even while not in voice chat. But the tagging system combined with some more precise matchmaking would be chef's kiss. Ultimately you will never be able to remove this disadvantage (nor should you, skilled teams should be rewarded), but it can be mitigated in a fair way.
This exactly here. Hell, I still maintain the only time I've ever had a decent MM experience for the lifespan of the game was Halo2. H3 and onwards you always knew as a solo player when you were up against a team pretty quickly which then degenerated into a stomping match. I bounced quite hard off H4/5 and never even gave Infinite a go but I came back to MCC about a year after its initial release issues put me well off and had a good few years worth of gaming through it until the MM setup seemed to flip a switch and suddenly I was only ever matched against full teams with my team consisting of folks that had only just picked the game up. So I just gave up. If they can solve that issue I may be back, but I doubt it.
I remember the day halo died for my group of friends. We played halo reach hard and was all excited for halo 4.... the game was so bad that half the group went psn and never looked back. Rest quickly went offline and never heard of them. Its amazing how 343 destroyed an entire gaming clan in one game haha 😂
Sad
But Halo 4 was miles better than Reach. The only good thing about Reach is Firefight.
@@eatanotherzio6811H4 is hot trash. Cope. Cope hard.
@@eatanotherzio6811are you high
Halo4 was such a betrayal I sold my Xbox and stopped playing games. If it weren't for Titanfall I probably wouldn't have picked up the hobby ever again.
based titan fall player
I actually enjoyed Halo 4 despite not enjoying the Prometheans
Halo 5s story is what killed Xbox for me
They had
-a lead sandbox designer who didn’t like halo’s campaigns and didn’t care for bungie’s way of balancing a sandbox
-a project lead who couldn’t articulate his vision and didn’t quite know what kind of game he wanted it to be
-a monetization head who wanted as much of the game to be monetized as humanly possible to the point he removed campaign rewards since it was too much free content for playing
-a narrative lead who was actively disinterested in halo’s past and wanted the game more like his Batman games
-a studio culture of segmentation, jealousy, rivalry with fellow workers, etc that leads to bad communication and disfunction
-Bungie’s codebase that they did such a poor job of maintaining since 2012 that it became a buggy, unfinished mess to build games with.
What could go wrong?
I felt an indescribable anger seeing this title. I had completely erased this garbage from memory and now I'm reminded it exists.
That being said... this will surely be another great video.
Dramatic much
Whelp. Even if you saw this one coming, it doesn't make it less painful to see it happen.
Insert general "We have learned From Past mistakes" says 343 while they clearly haven't. I mean how many times i have heard having a "10 year" plan being an excuse for general mismanagement and underdelivering. It's also a bit sad for those games as they cannot maintain a playerbase due to not having enough engaging content for people to stick around for.
Love the way people think this was all done out of incompetence and not out of greed / malice
I got permanently banned from the Halo Infinite steam boards just for calling one of the cosmetic microtransactions ugly.
Rarely do I get the validation for feeling so out of wack for a game than I did here. I wish it could've been better. But we're here now. I miss Halo and I wish 343 didn't fumble as hard as they did.
I think its really understated the damage Frank Oconnor did to Halo, that man had neither the right nor the experience to lead the franchise yet he went from community manager to franchise director...
I mean, he doesn't even have a long history as a player either. Where would his design skills have even come from?
Damn, this one makes me so sad.. I always appreciate how much care you give to these. I hope for a better future for Halo. Infinite was so depressing to me.
Yeah I saw the old art style return and the aesthetics were on point but man. Bag fumbled.
That and even on the f2p multiplayer the cosmetics were a low blow for me. It sucked seeing MTX when I could just as easily boot up reach and have a whole catalogue of cool spartan armor unlocked just by playing the game. Hate how the bar has been lowered so severely.
I can tell how much this video meant to you. I was never a Halo guy, even when it was at its best, but I always respected how much it meant for gaming. We all have a game franchise that jumped off a cliff (Borderlands was big for me), but I don't envy the decades-long Halo fans just wanting to feel what Bungie once gave them. Even when it came to camping outside a Game Stop the night of release, there was just so much passion in and around it. Great work as always, but specifically on this one!
It took me all of 5 minutes to realize the game was a bad Halo when "Slayer" wasn't even a gamemode. 343 have absolutely no clue what makes a good Halo game 🤦♂️🤦♂️
This is to be expected when a creative effort is led by a corporate committee instead of someone with artistic talent. I only wonder how often the phrase "Of course they'll buy it; it's Halo" were uttered in corner offices.
I'm old. "Free to Play" just says to me "mostly teenagers" and I didn't even like myself as a teenagers, so what chance do I have with teenage strangers from a different generation? Also, if the game is free, who cares if your account gets banned for cheating? Apparently I have this game in some PC package with all the old Halo games. Think I'll just play the old Halo games without the cheating assholes spoiling it. It's like that, and that's the way it is.
This ain't a murder mystery, it's a USCSB video.
Battle passes are the progression system they cut out of the game and sell it back to you.
Like buying a car off a lot and them selling you the transmission as an added option.
I'm at the point where Imma just skip the next Halo game even if its good. 343 is just too smug for me to have any faith in them not to fuck it up and I am sick of giving them my money
Smug is the right word. The franchise has been in catastrophic decline since they took over, and their community managers to this day have the balls to mock fans outcry and disappointment. Unyshek is one of their most senior guys and he's one of the worst offenders.
Still play Halo to this day. And (hate to admit it but honestly I have to say it for the ones in the back of the room) despite Halo Infinite having a good start at launch, it just fell apart for all of us in front of our faces (even now I still feel robbed for that)
I am still playing Halo to this day (both online and offline). Whatever happens into the future for Halo, I want Xbox to not abandon Halo, it’s there flagship title and will forever support (no not the monetization BS they’ve added) it till the very end. Thank you for making this video 💙
1:05:32 And that’s one of the things that’s the most frustrating, honestly, especially story-wise. As much as they fumble, they end up having *some* salvageable ideas that can actually be kind of creative, if they want to bother approaching them and fixing issues. But every time they get negative feedback, regardless of what the feedback is referring to they just…drop everything, including ideas that they could have kept and improved upon (like Jul Mdama or the Didact), which is why we’ve got this tired “villain of the week” cliche going on with every single game.
Or why elements that were actually really cool, like the Swords of Sanghelios (and longtime Halo series fan favorite the *Arbiter,* for fuck’s sake the Arbiter) end up getting sent to plot purgatory for years, only for 343 to finally realize people actually liked them and try to pick them back up when it’s already too late (which it looks like they’re attempting now).
Halo isn't made for us original fans anymore. Symptomatic of modern art as a whole; gaming is more about corporate moneymaking, hence the "live service" model. Delivering a finished product made by passionate developers, which ironically enhances longevity for many of us, is no more. The focus is on Gen Z; attracting new fans with short attention spans who want a flashy, quick dopamine hit, and then keeping them spending money with more and more monetisation. Basically, video games in the smartphone/mobile game era are not made like they were before.
343 has done NOTHING good... ever.
And the fact that they are allowed to handle the flagship game of the entire console brand is ridiculous.
Played the Master Chief collection on my uncle’s Xbox. Have so many memories from back then.
TREMENDOUS VIDEO SIR. Even thought you were blunt and honest about the bad, your love of the series still shined through. A++++ work.
Thank you kindly!
3:33 It was clear that 343 didn't like the Halo franchise when Halo 4 introduced new replacement main cast characters, Halo 5 had Cortana have a meltdown (yup, mentioned around 9:03) and Infinite had Master Chief beaten mysteriously offscreen in the first cutscene. My guess is that they also convinced Microsoft to greenlight the Halo TV show, complete with cucking fetish from the writer.
No doubt 343 greenlit the absolute dumpster fire that was the Halo live action series. Shortly before the show's release, Frank O Conner in an interview was gloating about he had an eye for selecting the best Halo projects to be made. This was where his "It's like porn." comment came from.
And Kiki Wolfkill had a direct hand in the show's development being one of the producers. So, I chalk up the Halo live action series as another complete fumble to 343's awful track record with Halo.
Majority of the devs from bungie moved over to 343 when 343 was formed so I don’t understand how 343 could hate halo when introducing halo 4 when a lot of the devs worked on the game for years prior.
Hitting a warthog with a rocket and grappling hooking onto it is fucking genius, honestly
How about you grapple hook some bitches and rocket over to some better entertainment. :]
I see one reply, but what I actually see is 0 comments
Probably one of those spam telegram accounts
CIA censorship on nerdslayer studios
I'll miss you Halo, I spent hundreds of hours in Halo 3 custom games, boosted multiple of my friends through the legendary campaign and relentlessly played multiplayer.
So many great moments when I was at school, having the best time of my life with my friends and never knowing it. Thanks, Bungie for all the fish and GG 343.
I wish I could get a high paying superfluous job based on projects I was associated with in the past, taking no account of my individual skillset or talents... Sigh.
even in some cases, a promotion
I enjoyed every second of this. As someone whose last Halo was on 360 and enjoyed it way more than my PlayStation roots would probably like, I always wonder why the fan base got so quiet over the years. Your personal input in this video brought back nostalgia & also introduced the frustrations of the fanbase immaculately. Praying for a nexus in gaming in the next few years where player enjoyment is the key focus.
Jokes aside, yestarday decided to install and try the multiplayer again and much to my surprise I really enjoyed playing the game. Everything felt just right - the movement, shooting, different added maps, interface (swapped to Lime/Purple). For the first time I actually feel that the game feels good to play. Don't get me wrong, the game for me was dead up until yestarday, but now it feels like a game worth playing - the quickplay multiplayer aspect that is.
Them taking out classic weapons like the magnum, them killing one of THE coolest villains the series has had in the big bad brute from halo wars 2, the progression, customization, maps, and gross physics made me quite super quick. I hope Microsoft gives Halo to another studio and we get a return to form. 😢
9:23 The skill level did NOT increase with bilateral movement in 5 purely for the reason that the "more advanced movement" devolved it into more of a twitch shooter that didnt even have the same skill cieling as other twitch shooters. Suspending you in midair with hitscan whenever you want to get free kills over a high ledge isnt advanced. Having an escalating gun fight where you can traverse the environment while fighting is advanced, which is what classic does; the ability to run AND gun, not run OR gun like 5. Also the maps couldnt accomodate for players changing speeds constantly so they were often unbalanced. Thats why the multiplayer was largely dead other then warzone and community servers
Great video! I relate a lot to your Halo experience and timeline. I played Halo 1 and 2 prior to middle school at my friend’s house growing up over the summers prior to the release of Halo 3. Halo 3 released and I was able to convince my parents to get me an Xbox and Halo for Christmas when I was in middle school at the time. It was my first online experience and I was hooked on the social and ranked features with my friends, reaching rank 45 on lone wolves. Reach I enjoyed, but only played for three months or so due to the limited scope of maps and ranked progression compared to 3.
Fast Forward to Halo 4 and I remember being really hyped to play it with my college friends by this point. Although flawed, Halo 4 was still fun for us to play together socially all of our freshman year. My biggest gripes were it was too casual, tried to copy COD with load outs, and the story relied too much on outside sources like books for average people to understand it.
I ended up getting Halo 5 and it was very polarizing for me. On one hand I struggled to even finish the campaign due to its hard to follow story and subpar gameplay. On the other hand, I absolutely loved multiplayer in that game since I really got into the ranked matches in addition to enjoying the social features like Warzone as well. I ended up putting 18 days worth of playtime in multiplayer in Halo 5 since it became my go to video game to relax to while finishing out college. I ended up being a consistent diamond level player and even managed to make online friends of a similar skill to consistently play with.
Fast forward to Halo Infinite and it really felt like the death blow to the franchise even to a longtime fan like me. Multiplayer at first seemed promising but lacked any content and had a very poor progression system as you pointed out. In addition, the playlist selection was the most limited one of any halo on release. The decision to not include slayer and team slayer only playlists baffles me. I played the campaign and enjoyed myself, but it felt well below what was promised to fans such as having diverse biomes. I just feel like the game was soulless and lacked anything to keep me interested anymore.
End of story, but wanted to share my thoughts since your video’s points matched my experience as a longtime fan as well.
I wasn't born early enough to watch Halo at its peak, but I can't deny the unfathomable reach and impact it made on the internet culture. If your game is strong enough to get NEWS coverage of people lining up in Times Square JUST so they can purchase your game, you know you hit it big.
The lessons Halo taught us, intentionally with its stories and unintentionally with its development history, is something to recognize and to remember for years to come.
Great work Detective! No clue what the future holds for this franchise, but I hope someone out there keeps it from hanging the coat and hat up (whatever that means lol)
P.S. Around 3:40, I couldn't help but hear police/emergency service sirens coming from your recording lol. Might need to keep an eye out for those next time ;)
The single player co-op was really bad. Open world made it feel like a chore and the game had no urgency. Go here, shoot stuff and click beacon, see cutscene, fight boss. Rinse and Repeat
SBMM is a cancer on all FPS, it only serves to make Care Bears feel safe from the dudes who bullied them. When in fact it makes all matches sweaty and grinds everyone to dust
One of the saddest memories I have as a Halo fan was day 1 of Halo 5 mid campaign I just stopped mid level coming to the realisation that for hours straight I just hadnt felt a flicker of fun or interest, that was the day for me I knew Halo was not going to be ok
*They're running victory laps without having completed the course in the first place!*
Man, there have have been so many similar examples in other companies and disciplines. This is how empires fall.
The colorful MCC clips just showcased how hilariously slapstick those games were, and why dying was often funny enough to not frustrate. What a great franchise unfortunately left to languish in the mires of Microsoft's greed.
Thanks for this detailed report. When looking at the whole picture it seems this game was a symptom of a problem present in most software related companies nowadays: automate, outsource and streamline as much a possible, always with profit as the main goal. Videogames are half business half art and in this case the business part was given more importance.
Kinda funny how at the same time Bungie started to neglect Destiny 2. Live service games are a mistake.
(Also, wtf is wrong with Frank O'Connor mentioning porn out of the blue on an interview? Sir, this is a Wendy's, chill)
Seeing Halo what it is now, is a bit sad really. I still remember play a computer that wasn't even strong enough to play Halo 1 and render glass without being a white texture. Alas I still miss those days.
Halo Infinite is a textbook example of being intentionally designed to be a minimal viable product, in both the Campaign and MP.
It seems like the longer we've gone in the MTX era of games, more people than ever are apathetic but accepting of manipulative corporate game design.
I wonder when the time will come that battlepasses, or even live services, are seen as absolutely unacceptable in the wider gaming scope as loot boxes had been after the monumental disaster that was Battlefront 2...
@@NotTheGaslighterif, not when... The reason for the loot box debacle was that it resulted in government intervention and as a result mainstream media attention
i realized after halo 4 that 343 wasn't suited for making halo games and the story of halo 5 told me they have no clue what they are doing.
Edit: even with the initial hype of infinite, I wasn’t buying that it would last.
I never really enjoyed the "feel" of 343's Halo games ever since their maps first starting appearing in Halo Reach, they just felt amateurish, a fanboy sticking in lots of "cool stuff'" with no concept on balance.
But it's bizarre Microsoft never let Rare have a go at a Halo title, especially as they've worked In the background of several of them.
God I remember when they announced Halo was going to be delayed and people were saying "This is good, I'd rather wait for a great game than get a bad game early". And then the game came out and it still was bad.
Honestly, big companies use the "promise something great, release a worse product than you promised, promise to make it better later, keep making promises until everyone forgets, quietly sweep the game under the rug, start work on new project that you promise will be great" tactic a lot.
This hurt considering I grew up playing these games with my friends and little brothers. We held end of year halo tournaments in school back in the day just before summer break. Simpler times.
This is truly a daunting day if a mainline Halo game ends up be discussed on Death of a Game.
Another reminder that it is never good to become an obsessive fanboy of corporate product. Corporations do not care about what they are making, and they only care about your money.
WORDS TO LIVE BY
In Microsoft there are 7 colors of badges, and also 5 email address formats. Both of these show your status in relation to the company.
And thus how easy it is to know if you are going to be jobless soon
Spartan Zoomer with the cat ears reporting for duty to blindly defend bad purchasing decisions, SIR!
If you match up the timeline for the Halos around the 2000s with 2020, right now we should be hyped for the third installment and finalizing the story. But instead we're talking about the game from basically 4 years ago and how it barely got out the gate, as well as not having prospects to continue the story.
Goddam this video is longer than the time I have spent playing halo infinite
Great video, I like the use of letterboxing each chapter like each checkpoint of Halo levels.