I believe the issues you outline with the weapon sandbox are very important and extremely hard to get right. Balancing weapons for both casual and competitive play is very challenging and it's something that Halo has struggled with in EVERY title. The balance of reward and ease of use is essential and it works with weapons like the mangler, sniper and skewer. They reward precise aim and make aiming challenging. But the AR and BR are two of the most common weapons so the problem is compounded. Personally, I like the AR's viable range because I always remember how shitty it felt to get outgunned at close range in Halo 3 or Halo 2 (SMG) by a BR. This often made the weapon feel undesirable in those more competitive, sweaty encounters. However, the element you highlight of how the game rewards skill, needs to be re-examined. Because you're right, the AR is too rewarding for how easy it is to use at it's current effective range. I think with some tweaking there is a perfect balance where it doesn't feel TOO strong and doesn't feel TOO weak. Eliminating the headshot multiplier is something that could help. Adjusting the recoil of the BR to be something the player needs to account for could also help. But in combination, I'm not sure these changes would have the desired effect. It's a very complex issue. The consequences the AR and BR balance have on the game can have resounding effects, yet the game is still fun. I agree that better balancing and rewarding skill a bit more, decreasing the reward for ease of use, will in the long run make Halo Infinite a much healthier game both casually and competitively. Great video, keep em coming!
Act man, you arguably have the most influence with the community and even the devs? You think you can make a video or something on these ideas to get the wider community talking about them?
@@westbrick690 I mean it'd be cool if he just shouted em out haha. Probably don't wanna advocate for larger Creators to just take another Creators vid and redo it because he's bigger. I'd love for more folks to see but perhaps a more elegant and nuanced method than just bigger person make same video
@@FavynTube oh yeah I didn’t mean steal the ideas or anything, just like “here’s some stuff favyn said” maybe expedited or something. You right tho 100%
I’d say a lot of the map pick up weapons need a buff Too many fall into this it’s really good at this one thing and useless at everything else and sticking to an ar and br loadout is going to benefit you more in more situations. Say the pulse carbine, actually superior to both ar and br when used at its bread and butter med range and combined with a sidekick because it’s a plasma weapon it’s role is Shield stripping to follow up with a headshot weapon just like you do in campaign. But outside of that it’s fucking useless. Essentially the problem with these weapons as the video says ease of use. Sure the pick up weapons are cool and unique but they need skill to use and compared to the ar on controller can just jump you and spray you down with no skill.
I liked "If making Halo F2P means losing a ton of content that makes it special, then It's worse as F2P game" from that same section. From the very first rumors of F2P, I absolutely knew that it was gonna heavily compromise the game.
You can take that quote and apply it to many situations in life. Better pay, better healthcare, better rights for workers/game devs. These are all things worth fighting for.
Basically all of Infinite's problems boil down to the fact that 343 wanted a live service Esport title. That's why co-op and Forge weren't available at launch, they focused entirely on the Esport scene. That's why all the 4v4 maps are symmetrical kill boxes and why there's no casual modes besides Fiesta. It's why people call Infinite a sweat fest, because it is and was designed to be.
It's also the fact that skill based matchmaking is more prevalent than it's ever been, even in social modes. All but guarantees that you will always have to try your best to do well which gets exhausting.
Which is hilarious since every game that comes out already trying to focus on an esports scene that doesn't exist yet HAS ALWAYS FAILED AT IT. Look no further than Heroes of the Storm and freaking Overwatch for proof for this.
I disagree actually, I think they focused so hard on developing an open-world (because apparently every game needs an open-world now) that they sapped all of their resources from Multiplayer. Esports was for sure important to them but when you spend and waste that much time on a big open-world and that itself also causes much of the games problems, I don't think you can blame anything more than that commitment to the open-world. They can't get Co-op working due to the way the campaign was designed, they spent fundamentally everything on making the campaign and it shows. As much as people hated it, the game should have been delayed even further.
My heart sank when you brought up how this game could’ve exploded socially if it had the infrastructure. I can perfectly visualize every single top streamer on twitch playing halo custom games and forge modes if they had been in the game at launch. I’m talking Among Us levels of popularity. Sword Tournament matches between top streamers. Forge competitions, infection parties, social media integration, the whole nine yards. It seems so obvious that these features would’ve exponentially made this game more popular and more profitable. From the top down, this game was rushed out the door with no consideration on what would actually make it successful. I feel bad for all the ground-level developers who KNEW what this game needed but had to watch management stumble around. Glad to have you back Favyn, a banger video as always.
With features present in halo 3 and reach agreed, this game could’ve been the greatest game of a decade. The custom games available in the halo 3 age are what made it the dominant game of a generation. It seems like 343 just doesn’t have that on their minds and it’s really unfortunate to see.
I'm sure any xbox or microsoft exec reading this comment would be screaming internally as loudly as I am after reading this. I had this thought in passing but hadn't really imagined it or compared it to among us. Halo infinite was meant to be the halo game for the entire "series" console generation and possibly longer but that was based around long dashed ambitions for a new engine and a full time quadruple A development window, both of those ships sank and as a result I suspect halo infinite will not be nearly as infinite as it was meant to be. Financially halo is in a terrible place that I've seen nobody mention, it took half a billion dollar investment to get it to launch in q4 2020, and then they delayed it a year. they had planned to launch a bugged out mess, eat the PR disaster and sacrifice the 343 to consumer rancor, intense fan backlash after e3 2019 caused them to flinch and try making it work, frankly It's hard for me to say which move was right, if it had launched in 2020 and flopped hard, we'd sooner have a new halo on that experimental engine but the gameplay of this game likely would have been blamed somewhat for it's failure or lost in translation as new leadership was put in place.
The title of the campaign is “Unravel the mysteries of Zeta halo”. What mystery did I unravel? I still don’t know what the point of the whole campaign was.
I really enjoyed the game but when it ended I was just sitting there realizing that I literally had no idea wtf happened in the campaign. I was expecting like 6 or 7 more missions to pop up so some kind of storyline could solidify. Almost as bad as when Halo 2 just ended.
Castle Bravo I honestly went to Wikipedia to see what the plot was, it’s so paper thin. I’m sure the “finished product “ will be more different. Now all I want to do now is play halo 2. Remember when the main villain wasn’t a red hologram for the entire game. Gonna miss that grapplehook tho.
@@jessecommins4499 Not to mention when Halo villains had understandable reasons for doing certain things. I still have no idea what the Banished's purpose is as a faction or what they stand for. I get they denounced the Covenant and their religious dogmatta, but then you get Escherum verbally sucking Atriox off as though he were a god. Then you have Escherum's motivations which are just... He's dying and want's a worthy adversary? That's well and good, if I cared about Escherum at all as a character and got to know him. All he has going for him is he monologues at you and tries to pull a "look at how scary I am, fear me Master Chief" line a few times. The campaign really is paper thin. Not to mention the big reveal of Weapon being Cortana which... I thought we knew that? Or nothing being built upon with Harbinger, or why the Banished are fighting humans and accruing power. It's all so weak with some much potential.
Grav Hammer Jumps. Super Bounce. Interesting/predictable vehicle physics. Map-based movement options (man cannons, THE FAN, teleporters, etc.). Player Collision. Grenade jumps (bruteshot/SPNKR/Reach Grenade Launcher). Fucking Sword Tech. Literally all 343 has done for the Halo Formula is add on features that NO ONE asked for, and remove features that have been praised since 2005. I don't want Halo 3. I don't want Reach. I want 343 to make a fucking Halo game, not CoD.
What Favyn very eloquently and importantly calls attention to here are issues far more impactful than the shop or monetization writ large. That said, the store and progression system are both atrocious in their implementation as well. Both things can be issues worthy of mention simultaneously.
343 has been standing on Bungie's shoulders for years. They're like the son that inherited his father's business without every working a day in that shop. I'm not surprised at all that they continue to blunder.
@@jacksonrelaxin3425 They have a massive library of amazing maps and fan favourites, yet most maps are human in architecture and there aren’t many of them in general in Infinite. They also wanted to go back to a classic Halo feel, they could have done that by copypasted maps for fan service. It would have been easy. But no.
I fully agree with what you said in this video. We need more critics like you for this fan base. We need people like you who will not sugar coat underlying issues or defend bad design elements or pretend that they don’t exist. People need to hear the issues that exist within the game, how it’s holding the game’s potential back, and how it can be fix. Never stop making videos dude. The way you deconstruct problems and shed light on the positives is unmatched in this fan base. I know you don’t just do this for halo, you’ve done it for many other games. You’re ability to critic and analyze game design is incredible. I only wish you were apart of 343 to make halo better or working on your own games.
We need more people sending more shit towards the fascistic 343 industries. They literally try to enforce the evil policy less is more. It's literally 1984 over on Halo infinite, if you ask me we should bomb their studios just complaining here or anywhere else is pointless. I am a big believer in that we should kill every single one of these Nazi like company just to send a message to them we don't support their degenerate views.
i mean... you say we need more people like him but since Halo Infinite's release literally all I hear about it is people complaining. I agree with almost everything said in the video btw but y'all have not been silent about this game at all, so loud about it that people are genuinely turned off from the game. They even had to shut down the reddit in the beginning.
It's just missing so much. And to have a whole tab called "Community" where nearly everything under it is an afterthought if not completely broken, shows just how tone deaf 343 is.
@@cryptotic5257 I dont think its fair to act like they dont care about the community, because thats not true, I just think it comes more from over-ambitions and/or incompetance.
@@cryptotic5257 to be fair, I'm sure a lot at the studio care, it's just the goddamn leadership over there at the studio and over at Microsoft that ruins everything.
@Shane The Halo fanbase is different. I find most people who go on mic, on btb. I also find people on ranked on mics more often than not. Ironically the most silent gametypes are the social 4v4 ones.
I really like Recharge. It's a map deserving of the Halo title. Each area of the map plays like a box fort, and you can either stay in your fort, or push out and rotate into the next one. The centre of the map is the no-man's land that can't be owned, so you better move through quickly to the safety of one of the forts.
It’s bland as hell though, most Infinite maps are like this. The interaction with environment is too little and the maps have no unique characteristics. Like the waterfall on “Sanctuary” or the big gate on “High Ground”. Recharge is the most bland and dry most of all. The aesthetic is pretty good,but it needs more..personality. This whole esports focus makes maps so boring just,same issue with H5.
@@TheRealLazyEntrepreneur I mean, it has the 4 pillars that change how one platforms around between the two entrances and the platform with the grapple on it. Yes, yes, I know, it's not a TON of interaction like, say, Zanzibar, but the cool lighting, verticality, skill jumps and overall less symmetrical layout/flow of the map kinda make up for it, at least for me. Now Live Fire, THAT's a bland map. 3-lane, only a bit of verticality, no real map interaction or moving, breathing elements at all, and it doesn't help that the map aesthetically looks more like a Forge map
As someone growing up with Halo - it's insane to see how backwards it all is. Games from over a decade ago were so much more innovational and complex. I miss so much :(
Plenty of games in the past decade that were incredibly innovative and inspired. 2016-2017 had some of the best indie hits in the decade and they're considered innovated over games coming out in 2007. Admittedly, due to increased corporate/for-profit models makes mainstream gaming uninspired, bleak, and stale; to argue that gaming back then was gaming at its peak is a failure to see gaming's progression from a quirky/weird hobby to a normalized form of entertainment as movies. Gaming in 2007 was that shift and why its more memoriable than today.
I belive your nostalgia is blinding you. Being innovative in a advanced state of any fields is always harder since alot has been done. Have pickable weapons was never seen back then but now. Its not enough. Theres a finite number of great ideas. Its not a coincidence that most game franchises rarely gets better with time. IMO nostalgia is one of the main factors that ruin sequels.
@@uberx2447 Oh trust me I love the Indie industry and hope it thrives, I'm jus talking about halo and seeing it's trajectory over the last 21 years. Infinite is no where close to what it used to be on so many levels other than networking and graphics. I still enjoy it though, I'll say that.
You said that if I kept an open mind (which I did), that I’d still be excited for Halo’s future. Unfortunately with all due respect, I’m not. With three Halo titles under their belt, and nearly six years of development of this latest one, I honestly do believe that 343 isn’t the studio for Halo. The mere fact that each Halo game from them spawned massive outcry from its community, and especially now the outcry is deafening, tells me that 343 despite their best efforts, simply don’t “get” what makes Halo great. And there’s nothing wrong with admitting that. Yes, I know the days of Bungie and Halo are long gone. I wouldn’t advocate for that anyway; they’ve done their part and moved on; however, it was Bungie that created what we fell in love with and I just don’t believe that can be replicated by 343. I don’t believe Halo will ever return to its previous glory, no matter how much feedback the community gives. 343 just isn’t the right group of people. Just my two cents. 🤷🏻♂️
Smol Doggy What? You realize Sgt. Johnson and Locke were both in the games..... it’s SJW to include black people in your video game is what it seems like you’re saying?
This was essentially my initial reaction after completing the campaign. “That’s it? Where’s the rest of the game?” I do believe this is pretty pathetic and frankly inexcusable for a game that was in development for 6 years
@@nunya_bizniz I commented this after finishing it actually. I just figured that since he’d already talked about the multiplayer, that I would give some quick thought to the campaign, because the game as whole feels unfinished and is a poor excuse for a 6 year development
If I skipped all of the pointless side crap that I got no real reward for, like the optional bosses, FOBs, Banished outposts, Marine Squads, armor lockers, and most of the Spartan cores, I probably could’ve beaten this in like 3-4 hours.
@@nunya_bizniz lol. Go play halo 1-3 story and tell me which one is more fun. Infinite was a mediocre disappointment in EVERY way. Halo lost it’s soul and it’s clear 💔
I wish the Hispanic Halo community was as healthy as the Anglo one. As a Mexican, I have seen many halo content creators who speak my language defending the atrocities that 343i has committed for more than 10 years and it seems absurd to me to defend a company that has only given us bad and cut games. I hope to continue seeing more videos like these from you. all the best!
I can play the Halo 3 maps without ever getting bored. You're 100% right about the Infinite maps lacking character and the lack of them exasperates it. All the 4v4 are way too similar, they're predominantly just square symmetrical arena maps with 2 levels and walkways. They're just boring. I can't wait for Forge and seeing what people come up with.
@@TheManOnTheStreetOMG am i really alone on that? haha. i did like the abilities and jet pack. idk this feels more like COD than halo with that grapple imo.
@@PhatAssObese loadouts were probably one of the worst additions to the game and waay more like CoD than the grapple, the equipment in Infinite is all just utility stuff and I'm honestly surprised they nailed it so well. It's more to do with sandbox interaction. The jetpack just gives you verticality whereas the grapple opens way more options with movement, interactions (melee and hijacking) and even has limitations with grapple reach. It's way more fun to use than just tapping X to go up
All the maps are good but they’re all the same theme: training ground-ish. What they really need to do is have alternative weather, daytime/nightime, seasons, etc. why spend 500 million dollars on a game where dynamic lighting is a huge new feature and not show it off? I’d love to see how the spotlights look and stuff
I remember in an older video you mentioned how 343 taking the route a sandbox driven game instead of an ability based one will not succeed in it being good but is the step in the right direction because their lack of experience in that type of core gameplay. Looking at it now I think that was spot on.
It's a matter of whether the right people are in positions to listen to feedback and act appropiately. Wouldn't surprise me if the reason why 343 has all these design and production issues is management/leadership that is simply not up to the task.
This honestly gives you hope? Him being in the forerunners meant he got Early Access to this game... not just a little early but months early.. imagine having all this feedback telling 343 exactly what he said in his video months before the game came out and them being like "nahhh it's good we're just going to launch it the way it is"
His words were already *not* heard. This man has been speaking the truth about 343 Halo for years, but they only listen to the nuthuggers and do what they want.
44:30 you are the first person I've seen that is able to actually explain the design principles of Halo beyond surface level analogies. However most people are going to need in game examples on every concept that you explain in order to visualize and understand. Your knowlage on Halo and your understanding of this form of idealized game design is priceless and needs to be heard by 343 or anyone that seeks to create something like Halo. I just think you are flying over more heads than you otherwise could.
The thing that kills me, is that the statement “you don’t benefit from fighting people fighting for more” will fall on deaf ears on a lot of people. I saw ShreddedNerd shared the video and a lot of people were trying not to be hyper negative, but a lot of people were already jumping on the “But it’s good though, must be clickbait” bandwagon.
U didn’t mention how terrible vehicles handle and how the maps are designed how vehicles. Vehicles have low health. There are barely any vehicles. The stages of vehicles on the new btb is terrible
@@FavynTube also the friend or fo outlines. I know u did it in a previous video. Still takes away from the experience. Wish it was just lights on Spartans
Absolutely. One of the best experiences in Halo for me is being the driver in an objective like ctf or btb slayer. The warthog is so flimsy, constantly in danger of flipping and can hardly maintain or build momentum due to the terrain and handling. :( And of course now there's SEVERAL ways to EMP along with grapple jacks
Honestly bro this video is a masterpiece. Crazy how aligned our thoughts are on the topics covered. Its sad to lay it all out there. Its sad to know where this game COULD have been. But the saddest part is knowing its probably not going to ever be where it could have.
Completely agree on the maps, it feels lacking in flavour, diversity in gameplay and creativity It doesn’t have to be some crazy next level creativity, just more In BTB maps like Last Resort, Sandtrap, Spire, Headlong, Avalanche, etc are all great and offer a unique style of gameplay Maps like Blood Gultch and Valhalla are great but when all there is for BTB is 3 versions of that it feels stale and lacking Same for Arena, the fact that none of them really have that “fun” factor that older Halos had Now Ill probably get hate for maps I liked in previous Halos, but these were ones I’d consider “fun” that offered an inspired experience when playing (for me) Guardian, Narrows, Epitaph, Turf, Lockout, Chill Out, Swordbase, Ghost Town, Midship, High Ground, Countdown, Construct, Battle Creek, The Pit, etc The maps were unique and had their own soul I do like Infinite’s maps but the game does feel like it’s a bit lacking in map variety
Except the BTB maps in Infinite are NOT like Blood Gulch or the like. There aren't wide open areas for vehicles to do their thing. They're all narrow-lane choke-point-infested albatrosses.
@@hungryyellow2119 This. 343 doesn't understand BTB. They don't realize that vehicles are supposed to dominate the circuit while being restricted from "on-foot" areas. Think of the buildings on Headlong.
@@Windjammer19 Yep. Generally, the best maps have areas for vehicles and areas for infantry, with the overlap typically in the middle or side open areas. The fight for anti-vehicle weapons control has always been critical. Now the paper vehicles can get taken down by anything and anyone. BTB sucks big ass in Infinite
58:00 when you started mentioning all those custom game modes brought back some great memories and the thing is most of those game modes weren't even invented by Bungie they were all developed by the community
1:08:20 ''The next great custom game that takes Halo by storm'' I'd argue that without file share, it is nearly impossible for any new custom game to gain meaningful relevance.
That’s the same problem with mcc. It legit has no file browser or anything at all not even just that tho the other numerous issues too. People say it’s the same or the old experience but it’s not at all cause 1/6th of the important features for that are missing or neutered by like only being able to have 50 forge maps or a theater is there but it’s a terrible version of it. It’s why the mcc lacked to have a player base. So much that the community interacted off of just gone. It’s simple nothing more then just a simulation of campaign, multiplayer, or sometimes custom games. It doesn’t give the full experience or anything those old games had. Those games were more then just multiplayer and campaign. It was an entirely different experience that isn’t possible on the mcc now. Like the lack of proxy chat and party up and so on it just makes the game kinda only multiplayer. Sure there is the custom games browser but it’s rather useless when everything else is missing. Most people just host there own shitty custom games on desert bus or past custom games cause the creation of anything we never seen before doesn’t exist. If it does we can’t ever play or find them. It won’t get to a mass audience and the only hope is sitting there in a lobby waiting on the browser and that’s kinda it. Before you could simply upload shit to ur file share or the file browser and really get it out there to an audience. Mcc makes that not possible and halo infinite is following in a very similar pattern it’s even worse tho cause so much more now is even missing. That’s why the mcc is for me just fun to play a few times just to experience kinda the old multiplayer in a way and then that’s it. When I got on original h3 I was hooked making so many engagements and friends and encounters that isn’t possible on the mcc and if it is u have to go to such lengths to get it to happen. It’s just way less. Sure it had a better forge of those games but it doesn’t matter if nothing ever comes out of it or people can’t save more then 50 maps. It’s just really a void. A shell of what these games were. That’s why when people say just go play mcc it just is like nah man I’m good. Same effect with infinite except infinite is a million times even worse cause they don’t even have a file share option now. It’s not even limited now like the mcc it’s just simply not there. 343 just fails to lack the importance of going all out on ur community. Bungie could’ve just added yk a theater like we have in mcc and limit everything and not have a browser and it would’ve effected the game but it definitely still would’ve been revolutionary. Instead they went even further then that. They made it so you can save ur films. Share ur films. Make a possibility of them getting on bungies favorites or on a community browser tab. Forge could’ve just been limited to 50 maps and not able to share them or anything but instead they went all out and with the help of a forge glitch to ghost blocks we made some of the most memorable custom games in halo 3. If they didn’t add what they did then the ability to ghost blocks really wouldn’t of mattered possibly ever been discovered cause no one would’ve forged enough really for it to accidentally be discovered. Even without ghosting there was still other methods to keep blocks to stay like holding them up with another block then deleting the block they sit on to not fall over cause the game still thinks it’s there. Not really probably intended but if we didn’t have all these healthy community features forge proper would’ve stayed what it was originally a map kinda small adjuster but instead it became what it did with the help of the community so then in reach they made a even better one. 343 lacks this thinking and that’s why they without really anything thought made infection what it was in halo 4 instead of realizing the importance of why it was like how it was and how much that allowed so many game modes to be made. That’s why h4 failed for custom games. It killed the community features. It had just as good of a forge as halo reach except it didn’t matter cause they killed everything else around it so then no one wanted to fuck with it people just went back to reach. Just like he said they probably will add grif ball but if they don’t add it in the original way it was crated then it completely kills the and limits the community. Just like infinite halo 4 had infection but they didn’t add it in the way it originally was made so it completely ruined everything that came from it and made it not possible. Just like if capture the flag in infinite is something you physically cannot create with the same objects as before then it really kills a lot of game modes. Power ups being pick ups I also see being a problem. People would make maps with power ups and stuff at certain points to be activated at that certain time well now thats all stripped away unless they add the original power ups to the game how they used to be. Sure alot of what bungie did never probably intend to be what it became but now that it is we can’t simply hurt them or change them cause it completely alters the possibility of that existing in infinite or new things to come from it. If they wanna do new things add new things in what was already created before. Don’t change things that were already created. It’s like taking forge clear back to what we had in h3 for really no reason killing off what we originally had. We can’t help it bungie set the bar so high and the community took the advantage of it but it happened and now that’s the bar u need to match or raise higher.
@@tamezzodiac2862 In the future, you should break up comments this size into multiple paragraphs. This is really hard to read. Also, MCC does have a fileshare. It sucks to use, but it does exist.
@@sgtcoffman it does but it lacks a file browser. That’s the point. There is no way to just browse or search for certain stuff. You have to simply just look specifically for the people you are talking about or thinking ab. That being like that tho it makes it really impossible to discover anything new or put anything new in front of an audience. All the other stuff only got popular cause you could put it in front of an audience so it only lives on through that now and people look up the videos to find the gamer tag to get what they want. Without something like that it makes it impossible for anything new to get out there. Also I can’t make it into paragraphs or I would run out of room as it’s way too long.
“Spider-man”, whatever that mode turns out to be, will be a major custom game. It’ll use infinite grapple on maps made in forge to maximise it. Maybe you use swords and skewers. I think that would have great potential.
"The bedrock the series was built on is just as sturdy as it was 20 years ago" literally I cry every time I hear that. People have forgotten just how amazing Halo once was.
Not all of us. We just hang out in the Master Chief Collection lobbies. So sad that I play as much (if not more) MCC than Infinite. 343i owns and operates the blueprints of the game experience they are trying to recreate and just can't.
@@samuelzuleger5134 Its not even just that either. I don't think if 343i came out with a bit more content it would've completely changed course, I think that Infinite is now competing in a market with extremely popular and more accessible games so although I do think that Forge and some basic things would've improved player retention I still doubt that the game wouldn't have leaked massive amounts of players. So many games now; Apex, Fortnite, Warfare, Destiny 2, Valorant, CSGO, etc. So basically they came out way way too late. I do think this is the last Halo game so lets pray that the game isn't dead in another year and that 343i can do something to convince more players to play their game.
It's nice to hear someone putting forward deeper convos on ttk, map fundamentals, and a real attempt at "combat evolved". Evey halo comrade I come across thinks I'm a heretic for wanting to increase the skill gap . Rewarding higher accuracy players should be the only way.
I agree with increasing the skill gap on accuracy but I'm not sure how you do that when their aim assist is holding controller players hands and aiming for them.
1:02:46 this forge montage really demonstrates why I've always said that 343 doesn't really know how to make forging look visually appealing. Side by side next to the Bungie games, their assets look extremely flat and just awful looking. Bad lighting, no textures. Just bad. Hope it's better in infinite. Side note, I've said since Halo 3 that I wanted them to go back to projectile based weapons for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. Some people didn't like it in Halo 3 because of some hit registration issues but I don't think that would be an issue today. I feel like every medium range weapon in 343's Halo games are pretty much just long range weapons anyway because of hitscan, and it really discourages walking in the open anywhere. In Halo 3, you could cross map people with the BR but it wasn't free or easy, so a lot of the time people wouldn't bother trying. You had some room to breath. In this game and Halo 5, if you're in the line of sight, you're being shot at, no matter what.
The last 5 mins of this video blew my mind. It's such a disappointing yet exciting thought that even though Infinite is a fraction of what a Halo could be, it is still so highly regarded.
100% agree with a lot of your points and i'd like to add my own, the UI in this game seems to be very lackluster regardless of all the bugs present today. It just doesn't feel finished like its still in its demo state. Even the MCC's UI feels better than what we have right now...
This was fantastic. It honestly makes me wish I went harder on Halo Infinite in my own review. Particularly on the map design and weapon balancing. it's videos like these that humble everyone else, especially when it comes to the writing, structure and delivery. This is the best Halo Infinite review.
Coming back to this video again, I feel like your criticisms have been validated. It's frustrating that people are still focusing purely on the "lack of content", which is only half the story, when a large part of the fallout is really due to the issues with the base design decisions brought up in this video which subconsciously affects everyone.
It also quite simply concludes to the harsh reality; Halo pvp is no longer relevant and we need a true return of arena shooters. Halo had it's time. A game like Quake is greatly needed at the moment.
@@BigGainer98 I think part of the problem is people expecting games to live up to their nostalgia of their first video game experiences, sorry but playing a game well into a decade of your gaming career isn’t going to blow your mind like the first ever shooter you played, Infinite has been super fun to me and I don’t personally agree with your take, also I’ve never heard of Quake and had to look it up, that game really isn’t relevant to the mass population of gamers so maybe you just have more specific taste and Halo isn’t for you
This is the review we were all waiting for. Edit: And watching the whole thing was worth it. So many things other reviewers haven’t even touched upon that greatly impact the game. Thank you for bringing all of this to my (and many others) attention!
Finally, A Halo Creator who told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I stopped playing Halo Infinite after I beat the campaign and wasn’t interested in playing the multiplayer because of the reasons. I don’t want free to play online, fuck that, I want good content. This is why allot of causal halo fans players reverted back to playing the classic Halo games 🤷🏾♂️
My love for Halo: Reach really stemmed from those nights staying up late playing a slew of fun custom games of all kinds. Infinite has not hit the same way Halo used to for me and I'm just not a sweaty little teen nerd with the patience and time to stick it out with Halo as it is right now. I'm genuinely just waiting for forge to see if they fuck it up. At that point I'll decide if I'm dropping Halo sadly.
It still blows my mind that there's no infection. Even though halo reach had a shit ton of problems, it had a kickass infection mode, and that was enough to keep me coming back.
Had to come back and comment again, you mentioned that Halo nowadays should have more social features than ever before, with stuff like direct sharing/uploading to social media etc. It made me realize that while I personally wouldn't be using that, it definitely seems like the logical next step and something that'd fit Halo like a glove. I've actually been pretty baffled at not only Halo but all major titles recently for stripping away community features. VoIP is about to go extinct, lobbies get disbanded after one match, no easy way to add people, no map voting or anything. It's hard to face that in the past I'd stick in the same exact Halo lobby for hours, getting to know the people in them and ending my gaming night with more friends than I started with, compared to the modern reality where practically nobody chats ingame anymore and even if you made a friend in a match you will never see them again after the post match screen. Call me a boomer or whatever but I really do feel like the gaming industry has regressed, at least in the social side of things.
I agree with this. Having the opportunity to continue playing with a group of random people I happened to gel with was the difference between me playing for an hour and staying up playing until dawn. Even though I love Infinite, I'm finding it easier and easier to put down the controller after 2 or 3 matches. It feels too impersonal. I don't care for campaign. Multiplayer is the only interesting thing about Halo to me. But it feels like I may as well be playing a single player game because of the almost total lack of meaningful social interaction and comraderie. When Halo 3 came out, I could literally playing social for 10 hours straight and by the end of that 10 hours, I still had to pry myself off the game for the sake of my health and responsibilities. With Infinite, I play a few matches and lose interest. I've changed, I'm much older now. But so has Halo, and not in all ways for the better. I think the core gameplay of Infinite is the best of any Halo game, but aside from that earlier Halo games, particularly 3, did everything better.
Just thinking back at how literally perfect in every detail Halo 3 was. Truely just makes me tear up a little on how much we missed out on with the content these days and really appreciated it back then. Personally I don't think we'll ever get that golden era back again with the on-going trend of incompetent development but would be a nice thing to dream about. Gaming as a whole has been a downward spiral for multiplayer titles lately and its a bit sad to see, especially for competitive PC players such as myself. We're scavenging everything we can to try and find stuff to fill our void of suffering because no devs seem to learn from the past. CoD was good in its day but fail now due to the SBMM, RBMM, OP Aim Assist, and the new patent. Last good cod was MW19, which in a lot of cases had issues (what cod didn't) but it was definitely a step in the right direction. Then the series fell off again. Same with Battlefield. BF:BC2/3/4 are the best Battlefields to date and yet everything after that failed. Same as MW19, BFV was a step in the right direction but still has some flaws to iron out. Then we have the beautiful monstrosity of 2042. Hope one day someone steps in to wash away our pain.
@@grimsvaultstreaming3956 You can have your favourites how you want but I was the no life type gamer as a kid (still am) that did play a lot of everything back on the 360 days but I keep coming back to Halo. You cant deny that nothing really compares to H3 honestly (even today) with the amount of content, balance, how unique the game is and how crazy good the community was as an fps shooter. Plus, it's fun af. I was looking back recently on the old bungie website and seeing everyone just having fun with everything (Barely any toxicity), even with the weekly blog posts crack me up. And the fact that they all do it right by making it fun for everyone with a competitive/casual state just makes you appreciate how much they actually cared. If you think that H3 is overrated, don't think you played it enough.
Halo 3 was almost perfect. Don't include the scene of the Forerunner planet, the legendary ending should only be Chief adrift in space and going into cryosleep. The terminals should be rewritten to conclude with humanity being the Forerunners. This way it ends perfectly, with closure, and makes sure that a finished story can't continue. There can still be other Halo games.
@@kiwi__3402 And it's some how the worse form of BTB 343 has ever implemented. It hardly resembles the game mode as originally intended and is far worse off because of it.
Best halo review I’ve seen so far. Almost made me tear up on what we got and the potential this game has. I’m both optimistic and worried about this games future. I really hope they pull through before it’s too late for the community. As a die hard fan of the franchise I’m afraid that this game is too much on thin ice and hopefully they make these changes for the better soon
I do think that from a player retention level, Infinite is more or less screwed :/ And as a huge halo fan who loves Infinite's gameplay and art design, that really saddens me to say. Adding a map or two every 3 months or so (which honestly seems unlikely at this point given its been 3 months since launch with zero maps added or even previewed) would do wonders for the game, but sadly I don't think the game will feel complete until all the content that really should have been there at launch is added (ie. Forge, co-op, mission select, working theater, file share system, non-battle-pass ranking system, desync and player collision issues addressed, direly needed vehicle improvements, etc.). And sadly I don't think we're going to be seeing all those things for at least another year, which sucks because even if _some_ people do come back, you only get one chance at a first impression and *many more* will be out for good.
@@343Films 2 maps every season, each season is 3 months. 8 maps new maps in a year. Halo 3 had 12 NEW MAPS in its entire life cycle, Reach had 14. Infinite will have more maps than that before year 2 of the game is over. I really get the impression Halo fans dont even know how other live service games work. Fortnite and Warzone dont get anything really until the next cod comes out or for fortnite every 3-4 months the map changes and you get a couple new guns. Apex the same thing, a new character, skins, and a map every 3-4 months. The real problem with Halo infinite is Customs and lack of forge, once those get fixed and come out.... guarantee the view on halo infinite is a 180.
No one said they had to be, but Halo needed to be in order to survive in today's market (fps in general at this point). People move from game to game so fast that an older halo games model wouldn't last long term. 343 just has alot of work cut out for them to get the game to a state (CONTENT WISE) to keep the season content flowconsistent. Its not impossible or that far off as some of the halo UA-cam channels want to think. But toxic fanbases and youtube channels don't help.
It took them six years to give us half of a game, and they think their players are going to be patient enough to wait TWO YEARS FOR A CAMPAIGN EXPANSION.
I can agree with most of the points made in this video but personally my main problem was the open world aspect, I don’t think the open world campaign idea played out right. Like cool we have an open world but that kinda just threw aside what made the campaign so special, being able to walk around in different environments and see new places. Like in halo CE being able to go from this amazing island that was actually a forerunner entrance to an underground station or in halo 2 going from a Mine over a gas planet to an underwater elevator ride. It just made me look forward to each mission.
True, the sad thing is that they sacrificed scripted and complex missions for it. What we have is a nice but monotone, unchanging empty and mostly forgetful world with dumb AI, I would glady switch for a few standart míssion like the covenant in Halo 3. I mean they could have done so much with it, banished who tried to conquer back zones, a hub which gets bigger and more armed with more marines freed, freeing story character like Lasky or idk spartans which give marines a morale (dmg or health ) boost, patroulling UNSC convois or Banished convoice which transport weapons or vehicles. God I swear if they had intruduced the flood shortly before the end, and after the campaign you had a changing map which gets infected more and more in different steps , until you conquer them back ... that would have given player long time engagement.
@@LethalByChoice it is open world, but sadly an empty repetetive uninspired open world. If you compare it with elden ring ( also fromsoftwares first open world game ) it is an embarrassment. It feels like an technical alpha where they had to still add the interesting stuff. Also none of the missions is even slightly memorable, because the scripted events you see in other Halo games are missing. It is a giant empty sandbox, where the only fun things are the grapple hook and the weapons.
Man this was just so spot on, i do like most of the maps in this game, but deep inside i do feel kinda dissapointed by them, not only because of the comparassion to the maps that defined Halo but because they all have such similar feel. Great review, i think more people should hold Infinite to these kind of standars and not be blinded by the joy of having a new Halo like i was.
LOL no joke. The worst was that on halo waypoint if you talked down on infinite leading up to launch you were seen as an outcast. Now, there’s no one even on the forums…
Broke me down for an hour and then put a bandaid on my broken body. I appreciate the video. Well thought out and passionate video that really nails down some serious concerns with the game. Some that I’ve had floating around the back of my head as well, but didn’t voice because I saw no one else seem to have the same opinions on it. Thank you for this. Here’s hoping halo really does manage to become infinite.
"Weapons with integrity feel good to use, and feel good to lose to." That's exactly what the weapons designer of Halo 3, Franscois Boucher-Genesse, said in the Making Of ViDoc: weapons in the sandbox need to be fun to shoot, and fun to be shot at. Powerful one-shot kill weapons like the shotgun and sword and SPARTAN laser can exist in both a casual and competitive sandbox. The developers properly tuned both the weapons themselves and the maps around player encounters. It didn't feel bad to get shotgunned or hammered. That's the limited power weapons and you ended up where they're meant to be used, but next respawn you'll return with a BR and well placed frag grenades. It doesn't feel good to lose to an AR whilst trying to hit your headshots with the BR in Infinite. You just think "why did I even bother picking up the BR?"
@@MrSlashtf2 The utility weapon has always performed better than the AR. Magnum > AR (Halo: CE) BR > SMG (Halo 2) BR > AR (Halo 3) Before you say something along the lines of "Halo 2 had no AR" or "The magnum isn't a BR" or some other shallow, surface-level observation, there is more to a weapons sandbox than simply what a weapon looks like. It can take whatever appearance it wants but still perform the same role. The Battle Rifle IS better than the Assault Rifle. It should not be consistently losing fights against the AR.
Couldn't put my finger on what was going wrong for me in these encounters. This is exactly it. I'm not perfect with my BR, never have been, but at mid range or closer I'm almost always getting melted by the AR. And when I have the AR, the outcome is basically the same for the person who happens to be going against me with the BR. It's not necessarily that the AR is overpowered, but in comparison the BR is much too difficult to use in these encounters when you take into account its effectiveness. You can basically just spray an AR like a toddler and most of the time you'll get the kill vs the BR, whereas in the case of the BR, you have to be nearly perfect to beat the AR.
Also, in regards to INFINITE being a 10 year game, they meant it was going to take them 10 years to fix everything and get it to a playable state...like MCC.
I remember when I first heard the "10 year" line and immediately knew the game was going to come out half baked despite being in the oven for too long. Think about it: what video game publisher seriously thinks a game in the current market is going to maintain a significant online player base for 10 years? Why not 8, or 12? It's just an arbitrary number used for marketing purposes. I mean this is Halo: INFINITE, a game that was developed for 6 years but lacks most of the content Halo: Reach had, a game that was developed a decade ago in the span of one year.
@@michaelgregor1640 This not only a Halo problem, almost every new multiplayer game that has launched in the past years think it’s ok to release half baked but still charge full price. Halo Infinite it’s only redeemable because is free to play.
I still can’t believe forge wasn’t there on launch. Six years ago, SIX, they didn’t do it, and there was outrage. They had six whole years to make sure some kind of forge was there on launch, six years to rectify that simple issue. It launched with no forge. I actually rarely played multiplayer in halo 5. I spent most of my time playing forge. This was because the forge gamemode by that time was incredibly in depth and let you make just about anything. I was so excited to see what infinite was going to do to step it up from the previous entry in the series, only to be massively let down when it was announced forge wouldn’t be there on launch. It’s a single issue, a small, stupid issue to most, but a massive, important issue to me. I love forge, it’s such a unique feature for a FPS to have, but it’s likely that it was deemed unimportant due to the fact that it didn’t appeal to competitive players and is now delayed until some point later this year.
While I do understand your issues with it not being there at launch I would much rather them take their time and add a much more complex forge that is better than halo 5 in everyday than give us a half assed one that needs constant updates because of issues and oversights
@@northstar_6585 True, but I still can’t help but feel disappointed. Halo 5 was a massive project with only 3 years of dev time. Halo Infinite was a massive project with double that amount of dev time and less features on launch and no real indication of what they’ll look like when they are launched. Correct me if I’m wrong, and I may be, but isn’t forge supposed to come out in Season 2? I find it odd that they’ve given basically no info and no progress updates or trailers on it given the fact that it’s slated for a couple months time. I understand the surprise factor is important, but I do wish they’d at least give us as players some insight into the progress of certain features. I loved infinite’s campaign, but once I finished it, there was nothing left to do for me. I’m personally just not a big fan of the multiplayer’s gameplay and I usually don’t play a campaign again for a few months, so without forge it’s kinda just a game I love but can’t enjoy right now. I dunno, I agree that they should take their time and give us a truly updated and reimagined forge that’s better in every way, but I also can’t help but feel let down given the lack of updates and amount of time they had to get the system working.
This explains why I played the game for 2 weeks and havent played it sense. 343 just... STILL doesn't understand what made Halo, Halo. Its almost like they aren't even trying tbh.. its kinda sad
Exactly when I stopped playing as well. This game is so generic. Where is the uniqueness. I'm tired if beating the same drum. But Overwatch on PC is an example of a fresh game when it came out around 2015 or 16. It's so unique and every character/weapon type takes skill and the skill gap is huge for each of them. The aim doesn't feel sticky or autoaim like. And I'm talking even compared to Halo infinite PC on Mouse and keyboard. I shouldn't "feel" when I'm hovering over an enemy with my crosshair. The aim should be more loose or slippery like Overwatch or Valorant. Much more skill based.
This video is a fucking masterpiece. Incredibly well thought out arguments and more importantly delivered in a coherent way. You can tell the criticism comes from a place of passion and hope for the future of Halo, instead of just having an expletive filled moan. This kind of work deserves a million views
Favyn has been underrated for years, he used to be a lot more aggressive in tone, but there's nearly always deliberate thoughtfulness behind his arguments.
Love the way he starts it .. ya know, the whole "leaving hopeful about the future" vibe. Positivity is helpful. All the negativity around here sucks! LOL. jk. Halo rules. I think that the tough-love sentiment comes through crystal-clear here with all if his criticisms.
You cannot believe how happy I am that you made this video. After two months of "the gameplay is perfect" and "they nailed the sandbox" it's refreshing to hear a review of this game that has actual nuance and critical thinking behind it. Hats off to you, this is what 343 and the vast majority of the community needs to hear.
After a yearish of Halo Infinite, I came to the conclusion early on that something was… off about it. After a couple months of not thinking much on it, I ended up getting back into Destiny and it’s gameplay. I realized what it was Infinite, and Halo as a whole, has been missing for a long time now. Soul. Now, ik this is a strange and very illdefined word, what is “Soul” what is the actual meaning in terms of this franchise? My best way to describe it would be as such, the Soul of a game/franchise is the endgoal of it’s experience. For example, Destiny’s soul is an ability looter shooter, it is an FPS where you strategize weapons, class and abilities to create a play style that is enjoyable and allows you to have fun. It does this by having an ever expanding loot pool, activities, and player experiences that breeds creativity and exploration. Or here, another game series, Marathon, while definitely older and definitely a bit… odd… compared to modern tastes, it’s Soul still works immensely when played today! Marathon’s soul has been defined by three primary characteristics, gunplay, storytelling, and immersion. Now, Marathon’s gunplay is famous as it introduced reloading and dual wielding in one of the first appearances in a FPS, it also incorporated storytelling terminals throughout the levels which made it one of the first games to really attempt to tell a compelling and interesting story within the game itself and finally it used immersive environment design and sound design to engross the player. And finally, let’s look at the original Halo trilogy, ODST, and Reach. These games’ soul can be best described as the ‘30 seconds of fun’, IE, a rotation of weapon management, sandbox exploration, and objective playing. Yeah there were lots of popular and unpopular changes throughout the years, Favyn has acknowledged this multiple times, but overall it was in concurrence to this Soul. So, if you’re a smart cookie you would’ve realized something, yeah these are all Bungie made games, why did I do this? To acknowledge what ties these games together, Bungie’s “Soul” of gameplay innovation. With each series, bungie is innovating the way their games play, not in implementing new movement mechanics, overpowered weapons, or underpowered weapons. They did it by creating a ‘30 seconds of fun’, a loop of scenarios that continuously challenges your knowledge of the mechanics, utilities, and gameplay so that you can play and enjoy the experience. That’s what Halo Infinite is missing, Soul of innovation and experience.
Honestly my biggest issue with Infinite is how PC gameplay feels tacked on. Like....it works, but it's just not designed for Halo's gameplay at all, you have to control your weapon spread to be accurate, by making sure you fire when bloom is at it's lowest. Meanwhile, plug in a controller, and you can have fun as you'll gain bullet magnetism and aim assist, two things Halo has always had, the weird clash between competitive shooter aiming and casual Halo aiming is just weird for the game imo, and it actively hurts the PC crowd and pushes them away, why play a game where you're literally at a bigger disadvantage than a controller user is against a kb+m user in something like Call of Duty? EDIT: It also creates a massive divide on how the weapon sandbox is viewed, imo, 90% of the guns outside of the AR and Pistol suck, because they don't kill fast enough on KB+M to warrant using, at least against controller users, if I'm on controller, I use every weapon in the sandbox, on kb+m? the plasma pistol if I can be bothered, and obv the power weapons
I'm a firm advocate for believing in the fact that Infinite should've been delayed till fall 2022, and it is apparent in the final product that this is the case. 2022 is going to be a very rough year for Halo Infinite, but I believe everything Favyn discussed is 100% correct and will be fixed in the distant future. Here is to high hopes.
I think Halo Infinite can be held for 10 years. It’s not impossible, all 343 needs to do is have people in the studio go on a massive UA-cam spree and digest all the information they can. The campaign is definitely going to get DLC and the multiplayer is close to being there. To put it in perspective, Halo is doing better than CoD in the competitive scene. That doesn’t even make sense typing that out. Everything is there, they just need to work on fixing and listening to the community, which they are doing. No doubt if done correctly, the 10 year plan will be successful in the long run.
@@mosesdevadass6056 you are literally cooked if you think this game is gonna last any longer then 2 years lol. This game is already dying and with all these bug issues pushing back future releases. More and more players are moving on to other games
@@williamcarulli You must’ve not read me correct. I think it can last 10 years, if it actually will who knows. It has faced massive drops in player count but we’re not even 3 months into the game. It sucks that we now live in a period where games are messed up at launch, but give 343 some time. I don’t think they did a good job taking over Bungie but at least give them the chance to make it right. If the game is still bad after several years, then I still stand by the fact that this should last 10 years. Microsoft should let Halo rest for a while, it acquired a ton of studios that can certainly fill in the void. Halo has been the selling point for the last 20 years, I know the releases themselves take quite a while but development for a new game takes much longer. Sit down, get a new studio, and I’d say develop the new game for 7 years. That is a long time, but with a longer time frame studios tend to expand more on the product.
1:14:12 “We know what to build on now.” Honestly, this makes me more sad than anything, because we have been screaming this at 343 for damn near ten fucking years, and they are only just now learning that fans of this franchise knew what the fuck they were talking about.
Your point just around the 57:00 mark about the guns being too effective making it feel MORE sweaty is one I totally hadn't considered but actually encompasses my number one issue with Infinite that I didn't even consciously realise. In MCC, you'd get games that felt like you dominated, or games with that one four digit username you were always going to lose to because he's been playing the game every day for ten years. It was cut and dry. In Infinite, every game feels a little too difficult (to me, as a casual player who comes top of their team roughly half the time), because even when you're playing against players you should be dominating, the guns are so easy to use you can still lose if you're not top of your game, and don't even think about trying to win if you're playing against veterans.
You’re right man. I wish it was like the good old days when everyone would use the same exact combo with the same gun over and over and ignore 90% of weapons on the map. aaaahhh classic Halo.
This is the best critique I've ever heard, and I 100% agree with every single one of your salient points. It's why the community is in a massive uproar-we all SEE the potential. Halo is returning to its core identity, but so much is missing, broken, and malformed. It can be so much better, and it would be the biggest thing in over a decade. Yet it launched in such a pitiful state. We all yearn for more; for better; for Halo as we all remember it, but even better. I hope it gets there.
@@drunkenn1nja debating new decisions when its been shown that 343 is listening in some capacity. why just blankly accept what's given to you when you can directly influence it into a better experience for all.
@@drunkenn1nja Halo has been one of the most important parts of my life since 2001 and it's been mishandled for far too long. Don't be judgmental prick
38:53 I think this is the reason the BR felt so inconsistent to me. I’m used to aiming for the head, and trying to control the recoil, rather than letting the recoil lead me to the head.
thats how you use the halo 3 br always aim center mass never the head, aiming at the head is more of a halo 2 style since that game was hitscan i like projectile more since it makes btb fun.
I didn't expect to watch this entire video... but you literally took all of my incomplete thoughts and feelings and laid it out in front of me. Primarily on the AR piece, most weapons in the game I feel no desire to pick up because they have a niche where the AR is an equivalent to multiple niches. I think the sad reality is that this is hands down the best shooter release this year, and yes it's a let down to halo, but also speaks waves of the current industry standards.
The last part of your comment really resonated with me. I didn't expect to watch this video in its entirety either, and now after I feel conflicted but I still want to play lol..but how do I enjoy it knowing so much is missing/broken?? Even if I have a great run of winning games I'm just gonna be thinking about how nothing I do will reflect my ability its all unbalanced, RNG, and network bugs..
Yeah....the shooter genre is in bad shape. Look at old arena shooters and see how much more fun they were. fortnite and pubg success with yearly cod kinda runined it
@@JTBergen95 overwatch blows out any shooter of this last decade and it's not even close. I've played them all. Valorant is an argument, but i don't think it launched with a respawning mode
This video needs to be spread around the halo community as much as possible, if we want change to happen now is the time to get our voices heard. Like this video and share it if you guys care about the future of this game and the franchise.
Voices are already being heard, big change doesn't come in a day development wise, they have a path, things are being actively worked on, and highest priority is fixing BTB lobbies and Cheating now that they fixed the store and prices.
@@dyllanweich this is very true, however balance patches should be a part of the development pipeline and 343i is not a tiny indie dev company that we should treat with patience. The problems outlined in this video are extremely important and depending on how 343 handles moving forward from this, the game will be drastically different. It could be good or bad, however I also believe that the solutions this video presents are the correct direction to take the combat, as if we look back at halo 3 which is where the design philosophy used in the video comes from mainly, it worked very well in that game, BR balancing, I mean. I believe this is also an opportunity to make the AR less frustratingly bad as the halo 3 AR was, because we are starting off with a more powerful AR. But mainly I just agree that weapons should be balanced around difficulty of use instead of effective ranges because effective ranges caused artificial difficulty, such as bloom for the sniper.
Imo, people aren't praising Infinite because it's an amazing Halo game. People are praising Infinite because it's better than Halo 5; With the modern halo standards set so low, mediocre and standard *is* amazing.
That's exactly WHY the game is terrible and failing tho! If they actually gave people what they fucking wanted since Halo Reach, the game would do much better, but everything is so mediocre, "safe", and they clearly didn't intend to revert back to their roots much at all, its all fucking nostalgia baiting my guy. Also if you really compare the two, in actuality this game is NOT better than 5. It's different. Campain was better than 5, I guess, but 5's multiplayer is better than Infinite's. It's that simple. To say Infinite is better than 5 is simply misleading and not true. Even if the game was better than 5, that doesn't mean its a good game. "It's not hard to improve on garbage." - Price
Or maybe just some people like the game? Im not defending 343s crap but its almost as annoying seeing people trying to find excuses to explain people actually enjoying things cause they just like it
@@Ace-hz9dr I'm not saying that people liking infinite is wrong. I'm saying that in comparison to Bungie's work, Infinite could have been so much better. On its own, Infinite is fine. but against the OG trilogy or even Reach, it just, falls so short from the mark.
I can't express how well done this video is. While I feel I find the game more fun than you do (from the sounds of it) I still agree with every point made and I appreciate the critism. This video really was a masterpiece and it felt like a journey. Love the videos keep up the hard work!
Infinite really should have been delayed further but I am willing to bet that the decision was made to put it out in its current state because it was "playable" 6 years of development with maybe 18 months more needed to deliver a fully featured product. They were way over budget and needed to start making money.
Delaying it further wouldn’t have mattered, they had 6 fucking years. It doesn’t matter how much time you give a bad studio, you’ll only ever receive a bad game.
The Campaign was indeed mediocre (I completed it twice) and the Multiplayer feels barebones compared to even Halo 5. Where is Firefight? Where is the military ranking system like we had in Reach. It’s disappointing….
This video made me precisely understand my own sentiments about Halo Infinite and why I feel some cognitive dissonance when I talk about this game positively. It's disappointing because it clearly demonstrates a potential to live up to and quite possibly surpass the legacy of what Halo is, and yet so far fails to live up to that potential in every regard. But being that Halo is now a live service game it's not too late for Infinite to live up to that potential. But we're not gonna get there unless we are vocal about where the game is currently falling short. Your section about the sandbox was incredibly profound, and I believe it perfectly explains why I've been playing fiesta almost exclusively for the last couple weeks: it's somewhat immune to people falling into the toxic gameplay trends you mentioned because the randomized weapons forces you to change up your play style each life and actually encourages you to get good at using every weapon. I sincerely hope the issues you raised about toxic gameplay trends get addressed or else I fear this game might spiritually become more like CoD than Halo. Your point about bloom, RNG, and integrity perfectly explains why I've been finding that weapons that don't have bloom are more satisfying to use; case in point I prefer the disruptor over the. sidekick. 343 really really shit the bed with not having custom games and forge ready on day one because they could've then leveraged the community's creativity and passion to make up for the lack of content in other areas of the game. I sincerely hope that all their resources are being put towards getting custom games and forge out and the rest of the "halo infrastructure" you mentioned ASAP because the lack of that stuff might be the real death of this game.
I AM SO HAPPY THAT YOU WENT IN DEPTH ON 343'S PATHETIC MAP WORK! This has been an issue for me since Halo 4 and 5, they are really bad at map design for Halo, especially when it comes to 4v4 maps in the past. I barely ever see UA-camrs going in depth with this issue and this has honestly been my biggest worry with Infinite right now over every other problem. I know they'll eventually fix problems like desync, I'm not sure about them ever making great halo maps like The Pit, Narrows, or Lockout. I'm sure they'll try to remake classic Halo maps only to find out it doesn't fit the damn sandbox and will ruin it like Halo 4's Pit version........This has been their biggest inconsistency with every Halo title, is the maps.
Such a breath of fresh air to hear this serious critique after all the near mindless positivity surrounding the core gameplay since launch. I was beginning to think I was the only one who was extremely unsatisfied with the core gun balancing and map designs. Your video also highlight issues I had but wasn’t even consciously aware of. Bravo.
Mindless positivity? What kind of circles have you been restricting yourself to? Game has been consistently bashed (justifiably or otherwise) since *way* before launch.
@@isaaclai1636 Yet this is a review focusing on the multiplayer, which was released earlier and has been under consistent scrutiny since then. Funny how that works.
@@HeliosDrive True enough that there have been aspects that 343 has been taking heat for since before day one like progression and customization but the core gameplay was being praised like the second coming of Jesus when multiplayer first launched (at least on most of the halo focused channels and spaces like r/halo that I was seeing). The overwhelming prevailing sentiment was that the core mechanics were nearly flawless and that it was just the content surrounding the core gameplay that had issues. You were considered crazy if you had criticisms like the ones outlined in the video concerning the fundamental balancing of the sandbox, particularly if you wanted an assault rifle nerf. The positivity around the gameplay was also used to deflect criticism of other aspects of the game. It was just very frustrating to see so many people blatantly ignore problems with the game both mechanically or otherwise. It also made me nervous that 343 would perceive the feedback as a green light to further pursue their flawed balancing philosophies into the future of both infinite and other games, which would alienate me and others like me from being able to enjoy participating in new halo experiences and leave us stuck playing MCC forever or just giving up on halo altogether. Infinite felt like a chance to get classic fans back into the series after alienating them for over a decade and for me it completely missed the mark.
Dude I cannot thank you enough for laying out my underlying thoughts about this halo infinite's core gameplay. Perhaps I was just blinded by my fantasy of seeing this game as the next halo 3 that I lied to myself in saying that it's super amazing. It is not. It was nice at first because it was a fresh halo game. I however, began to feel these underlying issues almost immediately after the game's "early beta launch." The maps, the weapons, etc. all have deep seeded issues, and the pitiful launch "content" and lack of player freedom didn't help either. I have barely touched infinite in the past month or so but I still play it from time to time, but I just don't have the desire to play it, and I want to feel that desire so bad, but I can't lie to myself about my true feelings. This is probably your magnum opus and is my favorite video on this channel. Keep up the amazing content dude. You deserve at least a million subs lol.
Absolutely the best video you have ever made and thats coming from someone that thinks all of your videos are incredible. Every issue with the game is fully covered and helped me understand some of the nagging issues I couldn’t quite understand. Honestly if Halo 3 and even Reach came out now they would be the most popular games with the amount of content and social media/streaming helping out. Here’s to hoping that Infinite will eventually get this stuff back.
This was the best video I've watched in forever. I'm not gonna lie when you first started I was skeptical, but now I don't just agree with your points, I feel validated that a lot of the bullshit kills at spawn or the "why the fuck does this weapon seem useless" moments I've had are not just me. I'd throw the sniper right there at the top. I'm fine with it being difficult to use, but it shouldn't feel worthless to pick up because you're just gonna get outgunned by an essentially hitscanned BR. This video made me realize why my dad and I played so many hours of halo reach snipers. Yeah it was a 1 shot kill to the head, but it wasn't a handout by any means. If you got body shotted by an enemy, you could even the score with your skill alone and headshot them. The potential for upsets and counterplay made you feel in control and that there was always still a chance of winning. That's something the AR and the BR alike blatantly fail at in this game. And also the shock rifle imo is a bullshit substitute for a traditional plasma pistol. How anyone can argue that an EMP instant sniper is good for the sandbox is beyond me. Vehicles feel worthless in this game partially due to that and having low health in general. Halo infinite makes me feel like two studios fought each other up until its release on the direction it should've taken. One half was a team of actual halo fans who wanted to extend the vision of bungie, and the other half cared more about monetization and "modern gaming" elements to the point where they forgot that a GOOD halo game will sell itself, and doesn't need to be free to play to break records.
Perfect analysis. You explain why dying feels too cheap, and aiming feels so strange in Infinite. I’ve felt like something was off with the weapons since the flights I just couldn’t articulate like you. I’ve been playing Halo 3 a lot more lately and nostalgia aside, the game just feels better. Combat encounters had this back and forth nature to them, where you’d get locked into 1v1s for a bit then return to the objective or whatnot. But in Infinite you just rip through people or they rip through you, everything feels too quick or easy or frustratingly cheap. These issues only become more prevalent the more I play. It’s sad to say but after almost 3 months of Infinite I’m noticing more issues. But after 15 years of Halo 3 I’m learning more and more about how well it was designed.
It really says something when one games mechanics are exposed as pretty not great and fatiguing within 2 months of launch, while another's has existed and been scrutinized for 15+ years and still feels great to this day.
this is by far the best video youve ever made. its a shame you dont have a large audience to actually push your ideas it extremely important that larger influencers echo your ideas and create a movement to make these changes
You nailed my exact problems with the maps. People have been trying gaslight me on this, the maps aren't good, they aren't bad either, they're just so damn boring compared to legacy maps. Maps in infinite don't feel like Halo maps, they feel like "playspaces" or maps from other shooters. All but 2 of the non-btb maps in infinite are the same halo 5 style paintball arenas. I would prefer 10 random halo 2 maps with no graphical upgrade at all over our current selection in infinite. We REALLY needed forge at launch... Addition: And 1 hour and some change later and this video was a fukn masterpiece. Every single problem I have with halo infinite that I've been trying to communicate to people, all hit dead on 100%. If infinite launched content-wise on parity with Reach, regular 60$, no MTX F2P, ingame store bullshit, I swear on my life it would be the biggest FPS out right now, and that it wouldn't even be a close contest. The head of 343 needs to be put in a chair and forced to watch this, I can only imagine where we'd be if 343 had this philosophy when developing infinite.
I thought the head of 343 was now Joe Staten, or at least he was given a seat of immense power to fix it. I read somewhere that Joe gave an interview and revealed some of the staggering changes he made in the game, like 343 not considering giving the Marines AI in the campaign because they didn't expect them to move around at all or something. Shit like that reveals to me how much Joe has worked to reverse some of the 343 damage to the series in infinite, I don't know how far that reaches into the multiplayer, but man. The situation was even more dire than it is now before he came back.
@@NFS0038 Pretty sure there's still people above Joe that can cause us further problems. If Joe is the one responsible for taking halo from BAD to almost good then I thank him for that, he should have been in charge from the start of this game's development. Still, if he is mitigating 343's damage, it still sucks we have to wait SO damn long on unfucking this game when it should have just launched proper. As it stands current players of Infinite will be working as unpaid QA for 343 for several months.
The easiest way to balance the AR is simply to keep it's current TTK, keep it's current range but nerf the hell out of the autoaim/bullet spray cone. Your reticle can be like 2 metres off target and you're still awarded with a kill. The simply fix is to just make the AR mechanics more similar to the minigun in Quake 3. That would keep everyone happy. The AR is still useful, it can still beat a BR but it now requires far more skill to use and it's not turned into a sidearm.
I’ve heard 343 Cut a large amount of content in its development, If you seen the concept art there was scarabs, wild life, different biomes, also I have heard that the story was going to be a bit longer it wasn’t suppose to begin at the infinity being destroyed . it’s disheartening knowing what this game could have been
@@theelite5135 They had 6 years lol and btw the engine they're using isn't a brand new engine, the Slipspace Engine is based off of previous Halo 5 engine, it even has leftover strings from Halo 5, Halo CE, etc.
Games may "technically" be in development for six to 7 years but often time they are redone over and over again to the point that that the actual development of the end product is more like 2 or 3 years. Halo Infinite as a game was redone several times. The actual game was likely developed within 2 and a half years as opposed to actually taking six years.
@@theelite5135 bear in mind that concept art isn’t necessarily content that was cut. Sometimes it’s just artists having fun and making art within the universe to get the team excited or to spark ideas.
Honestly agree with your thoughts on the AR. I loved the AR in 3 because it felt like a great close range utility weapon, bounce a frag around a corner and finish close with the AR. Not, lob a nade across the map and mow someone down across the arena
Lol the AR in 3 was not a good close range weapon. It was dogshit at close range and completely useless at any other range. The only way you could get kills with that gun was to follow up with a melee. I always remembered discarding that piece of garbage after finding literally any other gun.
@@casecao8412 Mainly talking about post-netcode fix in mcc. But even before then I’ve been able to score plenty of kills with it so it must be an issue with everyone else 🤷♂️ it’s all about positioning, smart play, and pacing the shots.
as much as people may disagree, one thing they cant say is that favyn doesnt know halo. excellent examination of halo infinite within the context of halo's design history
This was honestly an exceptional analysis of what is wrong with Infinite. I was only a child when I started playing Halo and though I’ve lost touch with the series since the release of 4, Infinite reminded just how much of a joy it is to play Halo. Just like you said, if this can resonate with us with only a fraction of what Halo used to be then surely we should hold it to the highest standards and lust for more. Thank you for showing me what I always knew.
This video could have seriously provided me with enough content to write my own hour long video. I love it. The rapid fire section has some things I’d like to discuss: BR is definitely too easy to use for what it’s for. You briefly mentioned the Stalker Rifle in the rapid fire, and I think those two guns in comparison with one another show the flaws that the BR has. The Stalker Rifle kills SO FAST with a perfect, but it feels very hard to land a perfect. I don’t know why exactly it feels this way. Maybe it’s actually too accurate for its own good. The BR is like “aim in this general direction and your shots will connect” while the Stalker Rifle’s reticle is SO ACCURATE that you can shoot between people’s legs and miss if you aren’t careful enough. Not only that, but the Stalker rifle lacks that same recoil that the BR has meaning you actually have to aim for the head manually in the middle of the fight with a gun so precise it could shoot the wings off a fly without killing it. Combine that with being peppered with BR shots which causes you to lose your scope and you find yourself in a situation where you’re probably better off just using the BR at long ranges. I talked about bloom in another comment I made, but I’m not a fan of it either. I think the RNG aspect is a factor in deterring the desire to seek out better performing weapons as you can outgun any opponent who has the same weapon as you as long as you get luckier than they do with their shots. That kills the aspect of bringing a different gun to the fight. If the guns aren’t symmetrical when used against each other (minus some skill difference) then why find a new gun? If I can just get lucky with bloom and win a symmetrical fight against a clone of myself using the same gun, am I really that encouraged to go out there and find a different gun? The Commando is a gun that I rarely use because of how inconsistent it is. I legit can’t find a situation I’d prefer to have it over other guns. I love the gun in theory, but it has so many flaws including the bloom. It’s like they wanted a gun that was fully automatic but was also a DMR at range so that’s what they created. It doesn’t feel good, and it doesn’t really feel like it shines anywhere. I’m going to lose to a BR at range. I’m probably going to lose to an AR or sidekick up close. So wtf.
The section on Griffball is honestly sad, Halo Infinite has a baked in throwing mechanic, we could've had a more complex Griffball with long range passing, and players with grappling hooks to intercept passes
"Honey wake up, there's a new Favyn video" Leaving this comment mostly for engagement, can't wait to watch this when I get home, there's a disappointing lack of focused criticism toward this game, though I doubt 343 will make any truly foundational changes. Edit: Hit the nail on the head as always, this might be your most concise Halo video ever.
On Last Resort in Halo 3, when you spawn on the beach, you can take the ghost through the ruins, past the sniper, past the rocks and into the broken wall in the factory. I always do this because people don't expect it and it's funny. I guarantee, if you know what you're doing, the ghost is an incredible defender on Last Resort; on the *second floor.* The ghost is easy to be stealthy with on Halo 3 (disappears off radar when not moving) and it fits perfectly on the second floor. You can easily navigate, survive and defend the flag or bomb plant point easily, *from the second floor." Teammates calling you trash? Look on the brightside angry teammate, the last thing the flag carrier will expect is a ghost splattering them...from the second floor Halo Infinite? Um, well I played on that one map that looks like 3 other maps in the game 👁👄👁
Nice to see someone saying it, though. I agree. The maps are pretty, handful of cool ones...but overall why I avoid the game. Not only is it hard to unlock stuff, the maps bore me.
Wow, absolutely hit the nail dead on the head with this one. At a time when the majority of the internet was praising this game you called out every single problem the game had and predicted that the rest of the halo community would eventually feel their effects.
I believe the issues you outline with the weapon sandbox are very important and extremely hard to get right. Balancing weapons for both casual and competitive play is very challenging and it's something that Halo has struggled with in EVERY title. The balance of reward and ease of use is essential and it works with weapons like the mangler, sniper and skewer. They reward precise aim and make aiming challenging. But the AR and BR are two of the most common weapons so the problem is compounded.
Personally, I like the AR's viable range because I always remember how shitty it felt to get outgunned at close range in Halo 3 or Halo 2 (SMG) by a BR. This often made the weapon feel undesirable in those more competitive, sweaty encounters. However, the element you highlight of how the game rewards skill, needs to be re-examined. Because you're right, the AR is too rewarding for how easy it is to use at it's current effective range.
I think with some tweaking there is a perfect balance where it doesn't feel TOO strong and doesn't feel TOO weak. Eliminating the headshot multiplier is something that could help. Adjusting the recoil of the BR to be something the player needs to account for could also help. But in combination, I'm not sure these changes would have the desired effect. It's a very complex issue.
The consequences the AR and BR balance have on the game can have resounding effects, yet the game is still fun. I agree that better balancing and rewarding skill a bit more, decreasing the reward for ease of use, will in the long run make Halo Infinite a much healthier game both casually and competitively.
Great video, keep em coming!
Act man, you arguably have the most influence with the community and even the devs? You think you can make a video or something on these ideas to get the wider community talking about them?
@@westbrick690 I mean it'd be cool if he just shouted em out haha. Probably don't wanna advocate for larger Creators to just take another Creators vid and redo it because he's bigger.
I'd love for more folks to see but perhaps a more elegant and nuanced method than just bigger person make same video
@@FavynTube oh yeah I didn’t mean steal the ideas or anything, just like “here’s some stuff favyn said” maybe expedited or something. You right tho 100%
I’d say a lot of the map pick up weapons need a buff
Too many fall into this it’s really good at this one thing and useless at everything else and sticking to an ar and br loadout is going to benefit you more in more situations.
Say the pulse carbine, actually superior to both ar and br when used at its bread and butter med range and combined with a sidekick because it’s a plasma weapon it’s role is Shield stripping to follow up with a headshot weapon just like you do in campaign. But outside of that it’s fucking useless. Essentially the problem with these weapons as the video says ease of use. Sure the pick up weapons are cool and unique but they need skill to use and compared to the ar on controller can just jump you and spray you down with no skill.
We need to come together as a community and demand better. Viva la revolution
“If you accept less, expect even less next time.” What a fantastic quote
343 likes.
"it does not benefit you to fight the people who fight for more"
Thats a great quote
Nice to see ya here, spartan
I liked "If making Halo F2P means losing a ton of content that makes it special, then It's worse as F2P game" from that same section.
From the very first rumors of F2P, I absolutely knew that it was gonna heavily compromise the game.
the problem is that many of the people "fighting for more" are just looking for excuses to shit talk people and be assholes in general
"If you accept less, expect even less next time."
You can take that quote and apply it to many situations in life. Better pay, better healthcare, better rights for workers/game devs. These are all things worth fighting for.
Basically all of Infinite's problems boil down to the fact that 343 wanted a live service Esport title. That's why co-op and Forge weren't available at launch, they focused entirely on the Esport scene. That's why all the 4v4 maps are symmetrical kill boxes and why there's no casual modes besides Fiesta. It's why people call Infinite a sweat fest, because it is and was designed to be.
U |SPAEAK FUCKING FACTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's also the fact that skill based matchmaking is more prevalent than it's ever been, even in social modes. All but guarantees that you will always have to try your best to do well which gets exhausting.
Which is hilarious since every game that comes out already trying to focus on an esports scene that doesn't exist yet HAS ALWAYS FAILED AT IT.
Look no further than Heroes of the Storm and freaking Overwatch for proof for this.
@@AzureRoxe Fuck, just look at Halo 5
I disagree actually, I think they focused so hard on developing an open-world (because apparently every game needs an open-world now) that they sapped all of their resources from Multiplayer. Esports was for sure important to them but when you spend and waste that much time on a big open-world and that itself also causes much of the games problems, I don't think you can blame anything more than that commitment to the open-world.
They can't get Co-op working due to the way the campaign was designed, they spent fundamentally everything on making the campaign and it shows.
As much as people hated it, the game should have been delayed even further.
“Maybe the pit was only the pit because it was the only pit” god damn I love this channel
fucking amazing take/script writing
Starting turning into a fucking rap god for a second there.
Obligatory "Oh shit", jaw drop, and pausing of the video because you're so gobsmacked at Favyn's writing.
My heart sank when you brought up how this game could’ve exploded socially if it had the infrastructure. I can perfectly visualize every single top streamer on twitch playing halo custom games and forge modes if they had been in the game at launch. I’m talking Among Us levels of popularity. Sword Tournament matches between top streamers. Forge competitions, infection parties, social media integration, the whole nine yards. It seems so obvious that these features would’ve exponentially made this game more popular and more profitable. From the top down, this game was rushed out the door with no consideration on what would actually make it successful. I feel bad for all the ground-level developers who KNEW what this game needed but had to watch management stumble around. Glad to have you back Favyn, a banger video as always.
I was so intrigued during that part i was like "oh shit that would be awesome". What a great fucking video this is.
Honestly got a little teary-eyed
With features present in halo 3 and reach agreed, this game could’ve been the greatest game of a decade. The custom games available in the halo 3 age are what made it the dominant game of a generation. It seems like 343 just doesn’t have that on their minds and it’s really unfortunate to see.
😂😂😂
I'm sure any xbox or microsoft exec reading this comment would be screaming internally as loudly as I am after reading this. I had this thought in passing but hadn't really imagined it or compared it to among us.
Halo infinite was meant to be the halo game for the entire "series" console generation and possibly longer but that was based around long dashed ambitions for a new engine and a full time quadruple A development window, both of those ships sank and as a result I suspect halo infinite will not be nearly as infinite as it was meant to be.
Financially halo is in a terrible place that I've seen nobody mention, it took half a billion dollar investment to get it to launch in q4 2020, and then they delayed it a year. they had planned to launch a bugged out mess, eat the PR disaster and sacrifice the 343 to consumer rancor, intense fan backlash after e3 2019 caused them to flinch and try making it work, frankly It's hard for me to say which move was right, if it had launched in 2020 and flopped hard, we'd sooner have a new halo on that experimental engine but the gameplay of this game likely would have been blamed somewhat for it's failure or lost in translation as new leadership was put in place.
The title of the campaign is “Unravel the mysteries of Zeta halo”. What mystery did I unravel? I still don’t know what the point of the whole campaign was.
To sequel/DLC bait
Mystery is "where is the plot".
I really enjoyed the game but when it ended I was just sitting there realizing that I literally had no idea wtf happened in the campaign. I was expecting like 6 or 7 more missions to pop up so some kind of storyline could solidify. Almost as bad as when Halo 2 just ended.
Castle Bravo I honestly went to Wikipedia to see what the plot was, it’s so paper thin. I’m sure the “finished product “ will be more different. Now all I want to do now is play halo 2. Remember when the main villain wasn’t a red hologram for the entire game. Gonna miss that grapplehook tho.
@@jessecommins4499 Not to mention when Halo villains had understandable reasons for doing certain things. I still have no idea what the Banished's purpose is as a faction or what they stand for. I get they denounced the Covenant and their religious dogmatta, but then you get Escherum verbally sucking Atriox off as though he were a god. Then you have Escherum's motivations which are just... He's dying and want's a worthy adversary? That's well and good, if I cared about Escherum at all as a character and got to know him. All he has going for him is he monologues at you and tries to pull a "look at how scary I am, fear me Master Chief" line a few times.
The campaign really is paper thin. Not to mention the big reveal of Weapon being Cortana which... I thought we knew that? Or nothing being built upon with Harbinger, or why the Banished are fighting humans and accruing power. It's all so weak with some much potential.
I really miss the old gravity physics. I miss grenade jumping, player collision and friendly fire.
Grav Hammer Jumps. Super Bounce. Interesting/predictable vehicle physics. Map-based movement options (man cannons, THE FAN, teleporters, etc.). Player Collision. Grenade jumps (bruteshot/SPNKR/Reach Grenade Launcher). Fucking Sword Tech. Literally all 343 has done for the Halo Formula is add on features that NO ONE asked for, and remove features that have been praised since 2005. I don't want Halo 3. I don't want Reach. I want 343 to make a fucking Halo game, not CoD.
Im sure the lack of player collision is the reason why the melee is broken in this game
@@peacelove6455 EXACTLY what I was thinking
"Those features were fun, so we got rid of them." -343 probably
Finally, a halo creator whose not obsessed with the store.
What Favyn very eloquently and importantly calls attention to here are issues far more impactful than the shop or monetization writ large. That said, the store and progression system are both atrocious in their implementation as well. Both things can be issues worthy of mention simultaneously.
@@343Films I agree but the monetization can kinda wait until after the issues with gameplay are fixed.
@@JazzOLantern Dont forget optimization as well.
What's the store
@@JazzOLantern they should continue to Nickle and dime us for basic content while the game is broken?? How's that make sense.
It's hard to believe a game that wanted to lean so hard into it's roots and some nostalgia aspects, failed to put in any classic maps on launch.
343 has been standing on Bungie's shoulders for years. They're like the son that inherited his father's business without every working a day in that shop. I'm not surprised at all that they continue to blunder.
@@ImNeurons Very well said. 343 is standing on the shoulders of giants, yet it seems they’re looking in the wrong direction every time.
It’s hard to believe that people find it hard to believe they only put new maps in a new game at the new games launch. Wow so weird man
@@jacksonrelaxin3425 They have a massive library of amazing maps and fan favourites, yet most maps are human in architecture and there aren’t many of them in general in Infinite. They also wanted to go back to a classic Halo feel, they could have done that by copypasted maps for fan service. It would have been easy. But no.
I guess the first 3 years making the game was nothing
I fully agree with what you said in this video. We need more critics like you for this fan base. We need people like you who will not sugar coat underlying issues or defend bad design elements or pretend that they don’t exist. People need to hear the issues that exist within the game, how it’s holding the game’s potential back, and how it can be fix. Never stop making videos dude. The way you deconstruct problems and shed light on the positives is unmatched in this fan base. I know you don’t just do this for halo, you’ve done it for many other games. You’re ability to critic and analyze game design is incredible. I only wish you were apart of 343 to make halo better or working on your own games.
We need more people sending more shit towards the fascistic 343 industries. They literally try to enforce the evil policy less is more. It's literally 1984 over on Halo infinite, if you ask me we should bomb their studios just complaining here or anywhere else is pointless. I am a big believer in that we should kill every single one of these Nazi like company just to send a message to them we don't support their degenerate views.
@@klutzspecter3470 the edge so sharp i turn into emo
@@unknownwill4th549 Poe has a very unique law over the internet.
i mean... you say we need more people like him but since Halo Infinite's release literally all I hear about it is people complaining. I agree with almost everything said in the video btw but y'all have not been silent about this game at all, so loud about it that people are genuinely turned off from the game. They even had to shut down the reddit in the beginning.
The fact this incomplete game is blowing everyone's mind shows u just how low the standard is currently so sad.
Agreed. This just reminds me of Bioshock Infinite all over again. A subpar game praised to the high heavens. Shocking really.
@@Tommybotham Infinite was the best Bioshock
@@hambonepng1152 I love Infinite, but it was definitely the worst one.
@@benjamintherogue2421 I agree, 1 and 2 was the best!
@@Tommybotham What didn't you like about infinite?
It's just missing so much. And to have a whole tab called "Community" where nearly everything under it is an afterthought if not completely broken, shows just how tone deaf 343 is.
Shows you how important the community is to them
@@cryptotic5257
Bingo, this right here.
@@cryptotic5257 I dont think its fair to act like they dont care about the community, because thats not true, I just think it comes more from over-ambitions and/or incompetance.
@@cryptotic5257 to be fair, I'm sure a lot at the studio care, it's just the goddamn leadership over there at the studio and over at Microsoft that ruins everything.
@Shane
The Halo fanbase is different. I find most people who go on mic, on btb. I also find people on ranked on mics more often than not. Ironically the most silent gametypes are the social 4v4 ones.
I’ve never heard better map analysis in my life. Made me realize a lot with infinite and the work that it could use
I really like Recharge. It's a map deserving of the Halo title. Each area of the map plays like a box fort, and you can either stay in your fort, or push out and rotate into the next one. The centre of the map is the no-man's land that can't be owned, so you better move through quickly to the safety of one of the forts.
It’s bland as hell though, most Infinite maps are like this. The interaction with environment is too little and the maps have no unique characteristics. Like the waterfall on “Sanctuary” or the big gate on “High Ground”. Recharge is the most bland and dry most of all. The aesthetic is pretty good,but it needs more..personality. This whole esports focus makes maps so boring just,same issue with H5.
@@TheRealLazyEntrepreneur I mean, it has the 4 pillars that change how one platforms around between the two entrances and the platform with the grapple on it. Yes, yes, I know, it's not a TON of interaction like, say, Zanzibar, but the cool lighting, verticality, skill jumps and overall less symmetrical layout/flow of the map kinda make up for it, at least for me.
Now Live Fire, THAT's a bland map. 3-lane, only a bit of verticality, no real map interaction or moving, breathing elements at all, and it doesn't help that the map aesthetically looks more like a Forge map
As someone growing up with Halo - it's insane to see how backwards it all is. Games from over a decade ago were so much more innovational and complex. I miss so much :(
Plenty of games in the past decade that were incredibly innovative and inspired. 2016-2017 had some of the best indie hits in the decade and they're considered innovated over games coming out in 2007.
Admittedly, due to increased corporate/for-profit models makes mainstream gaming uninspired, bleak, and stale; to argue that gaming back then was gaming at its peak is a failure to see gaming's progression from a quirky/weird hobby to a normalized form of entertainment as movies. Gaming in 2007 was that shift and why its more memoriable than today.
be glad we got to experience the classic Bungie Halos :) its all gone now
I belive your nostalgia is blinding you. Being innovative in a advanced state of any fields is always harder since alot has been done. Have pickable weapons was never seen back then but now. Its not enough. Theres a finite number of great ideas. Its not a coincidence that most game franchises rarely gets better with time. IMO nostalgia is one of the main factors that ruin sequels.
@@uberx2447 Oh trust me I love the Indie industry and hope it thrives, I'm jus talking about halo and seeing it's trajectory over the last 21 years. Infinite is no where close to what it used to be on so many levels other than networking and graphics. I still enjoy it though, I'll say that.
@@xcessiveO_o It really was the old Bungie that made it what we remembered.
You said that if I kept an open mind (which I did), that I’d still be excited for Halo’s future. Unfortunately with all due respect, I’m not. With three Halo titles under their belt, and nearly six years of development of this latest one, I honestly do believe that 343 isn’t the studio for Halo. The mere fact that each Halo game from them spawned massive outcry from its community, and especially now the outcry is deafening, tells me that 343 despite their best efforts, simply don’t “get” what makes Halo great. And there’s nothing wrong with admitting that.
Yes, I know the days of Bungie and Halo are long gone. I wouldn’t advocate for that anyway; they’ve done their part and moved on; however, it was Bungie that created what we fell in love with and I just don’t believe that can be replicated by 343. I don’t believe Halo will ever return to its previous glory, no matter how much feedback the community gives. 343 just isn’t the right group of people.
Just my two cents. 🤷🏻♂️
I really couldn't agree more. I think it's time Microsoft consider a different studio to handle Halo.
I agree 100%. 343 is extremely incompetent. I would like to see respawn take a crack at it.
@@ThatXLazerXGuy respawn makes the UNSC the bad guys and now the insurrection becomes the new heroes with a black male lead
_"A bloody fate awaits you and the rest of your incompetent race, and I, Tartarus, chieftain of the Brutes will send you to it"_
Smol Doggy What? You realize Sgt. Johnson and Locke were both in the games..... it’s SJW to include black people in your video game is what it seems like you’re saying?
A lot of people seemed blinded by the gameplay being good. I felt letdown from day one and was hoping for more, maps were a LARGE part of that
Yeah, the maps are pretty mediocre and bland to look at. The flow of the maps just isn't anywhere near as good as Sandtrap, The Pit and Blood Gulch.
"When you first saw Halo Infinite, were you blinded by its gameplay??"
@@TheChadPad “Noooo”
HALO INFINITE CORE GAMEPLAY IS THE🎉🐐💯🙀🔥 GOAT
@@socialoutcast1327yes we all was and still is infinite is goat of all halos 💯🔥🙀
This was essentially my initial reaction after completing the campaign. “That’s it? Where’s the rest of the game?” I do believe this is pretty pathetic and frankly inexcusable for a game that was in development for 6 years
Uh, this video was about MP. You should watch it first then comment.
@@nunya_bizniz I commented this after finishing it actually. I just figured that since he’d already talked about the multiplayer, that I would give some quick thought to the campaign, because the game as whole feels unfinished and is a poor excuse for a 6 year development
@@hyguy1258 fair enough. I've had alot of fun playing both, albeit with some frustration. Most of my displeasure comes from technical issues.
If I skipped all of the pointless side crap that I got no real reward for, like the optional bosses, FOBs, Banished outposts, Marine Squads, armor lockers, and most of the Spartan cores, I probably could’ve beaten this in like 3-4 hours.
@@nunya_bizniz lol. Go play halo 1-3 story and tell me which one is more fun. Infinite was a mediocre disappointment in EVERY way. Halo lost it’s soul and it’s clear 💔
I wish the Hispanic Halo community was as healthy as the Anglo one. As a Mexican, I have seen many halo content creators who speak my language defending the atrocities that 343i has committed for more than 10 years and it seems absurd to me to defend a company that has only given us bad and cut games. I hope to continue seeing more videos like these from you. all the best!
I can play the Halo 3 maps without ever getting bored. You're 100% right about the Infinite maps lacking character and the lack of them exasperates it. All the 4v4 are way too similar, they're predominantly just square symmetrical arena maps with 2 levels and walkways. They're just boring. I can't wait for Forge and seeing what people come up with.
I really thought it was a “cyber punk mod” when I saw Halo infinite. WTH 🤦♂️ is up with the dumb grapple, jet pack please!!
@@PhatAssObese nah the grapples ace, jetpacks boring af
@@TheManOnTheStreetOMG am i really alone on that? haha. i did like the abilities and jet pack. idk this feels more like COD than halo with that grapple imo.
@@PhatAssObese loadouts were probably one of the worst additions to the game and waay more like CoD than the grapple, the equipment in Infinite is all just utility stuff and I'm honestly surprised they nailed it so well. It's more to do with sandbox interaction. The jetpack just gives you verticality whereas the grapple opens way more options with movement, interactions (melee and hijacking) and even has limitations with grapple reach. It's way more fun to use than just tapping X to go up
All the maps are good but they’re all the same theme: training ground-ish. What they really need to do is have alternative weather, daytime/nightime, seasons, etc. why spend 500 million dollars on a game where dynamic lighting is a huge new feature and not show it off? I’d love to see how the spotlights look and stuff
I remember in an older video you mentioned how 343 taking the route a sandbox driven game instead of an ability based one will not succeed in it being good but is the step in the right direction because their lack of experience in that type of core gameplay. Looking at it now I think that was spot on.
100%
The fact that he's part of the forerunner project gives me hope that his words will be heared. Because this man is preaching nothing but truth.
I'm confident at least some members of 343 have seen this already
It's a matter of whether the right people are in positions to listen to feedback and act appropiately. Wouldn't surprise me if the reason why 343 has all these design and production issues is management/leadership that is simply not up to the task.
Lol sounds like they ruined it. They're not true ogs
This honestly gives you hope? Him being in the forerunners meant he got Early Access to this game... not just a little early but months early.. imagine having all this feedback telling 343 exactly what he said in his video months before the game came out and them being like "nahhh it's good we're just going to launch it the way it is"
His words were already *not* heard. This man has been speaking the truth about 343 Halo for years, but they only listen to the nuthuggers and do what they want.
44:30 you are the first person I've seen that is able to actually explain the design principles of Halo beyond surface level analogies.
However most people are going to need in game examples on every concept that you explain in order to visualize and understand.
Your knowlage on Halo and your understanding of this form of idealized game design is priceless and needs to be heard by 343 or anyone that seeks to create something like Halo. I just think you are flying over more heads than you otherwise could.
The thing that kills me, is that the statement “you don’t benefit from fighting people fighting for more” will fall on deaf ears on a lot of people. I saw ShreddedNerd shared the video and a lot of people were trying not to be hyper negative, but a lot of people were already jumping on the “But it’s good though, must be clickbait” bandwagon.
Shreddednerd is great btw check em out
U didn’t mention how terrible vehicles handle and how the maps are designed how vehicles. Vehicles have low health. There are barely any vehicles. The stages of vehicles on the new btb is terrible
Add it to the list
@@FavynTube also the friend or fo outlines. I know u did it in a previous video. Still takes away from the experience. Wish it was just lights on Spartans
Absolutely. One of the best experiences in Halo for me is being the driver in an objective like ctf or btb slayer.
The warthog is so flimsy, constantly in danger of flipping and can hardly maintain or build momentum due to the terrain and handling. :(
And of course now there's SEVERAL ways to EMP along with grapple jacks
Honestly bro this video is a masterpiece. Crazy how aligned our thoughts are on the topics covered.
Its sad to lay it all out there. Its sad to know where this game COULD have been. But the saddest part is knowing its probably not going to ever be where it could have.
@@wildcardwinner6219 likely nothing will be done for at least 6 months. Likely more
Completely agree on the maps, it feels lacking in flavour, diversity in gameplay and creativity
It doesn’t have to be some crazy next level creativity, just more
In BTB maps like Last Resort, Sandtrap, Spire, Headlong, Avalanche, etc are all great and offer a unique style of gameplay
Maps like Blood Gultch and Valhalla are great but when all there is for BTB is 3 versions of that it feels stale and lacking
Same for Arena, the fact that none of them really have that “fun” factor that older Halos had
Now Ill probably get hate for maps I liked in previous Halos, but these were ones I’d consider “fun” that offered an inspired experience when playing (for me)
Guardian, Narrows, Epitaph, Turf, Lockout, Chill Out, Swordbase, Ghost Town, Midship, High Ground, Countdown, Construct, Battle Creek, The Pit, etc
The maps were unique and had their own soul
I do like Infinite’s maps but the game does feel like it’s a bit lacking in map variety
H2 containment was the GOAT btb map
@@sukmidri Finally, someone gets it!
Except the BTB maps in Infinite are NOT like Blood Gulch or the like. There aren't wide open areas for vehicles to do their thing. They're all narrow-lane choke-point-infested albatrosses.
@@hungryyellow2119 This. 343 doesn't understand BTB. They don't realize that vehicles are supposed to dominate the circuit while being restricted from "on-foot" areas. Think of the buildings on Headlong.
@@Windjammer19 Yep. Generally, the best maps have areas for vehicles and areas for infantry, with the overlap typically in the middle or side open areas. The fight for anti-vehicle weapons control has always been critical. Now the paper vehicles can get taken down by anything and anyone. BTB sucks big ass in Infinite
58:00 when you started mentioning all those custom game modes brought back some great memories and the thing is most of those game modes weren't even invented by Bungie they were all developed by the community
1:08:20 ''The next great custom game that takes Halo by storm''
I'd argue that without file share, it is nearly impossible for any new custom game to gain meaningful relevance.
Without file share, forge, in-game community content highlights, social media interfacing, etc.
That’s the same problem with mcc. It legit has no file browser or anything at all not even just that tho the other numerous issues too. People say it’s the same or the old experience but it’s not at all cause 1/6th of the important features for that are missing or neutered by like only being able to have 50 forge maps or a theater is there but it’s a terrible version of it. It’s why the mcc lacked to have a player base. So much that the community interacted off of just gone. It’s simple nothing more then just a simulation of campaign, multiplayer, or sometimes custom games. It doesn’t give the full experience or anything those old games had. Those games were more then just multiplayer and campaign. It was an entirely different experience that isn’t possible on the mcc now. Like the lack of proxy chat and party up and so on it just makes the game kinda only multiplayer. Sure there is the custom games browser but it’s rather useless when everything else is missing. Most people just host there own shitty custom games on desert bus or past custom games cause the creation of anything we never seen before doesn’t exist. If it does we can’t ever play or find them. It won’t get to a mass audience and the only hope is sitting there in a lobby waiting on the browser and that’s kinda it. Before you could simply upload shit to ur file share or the file browser and really get it out there to an audience. Mcc makes that not possible and halo infinite is following in a very similar pattern it’s even worse tho cause so much more now is even missing. That’s why the mcc is for me just fun to play a few times just to experience kinda the old multiplayer in a way and then that’s it. When I got on original h3 I was hooked making so many engagements and friends and encounters that isn’t possible on the mcc and if it is u have to go to such lengths to get it to happen. It’s just way less. Sure it had a better forge of those games but it doesn’t matter if nothing ever comes out of it or people can’t save more then 50 maps. It’s just really a void. A shell of what these games were. That’s why when people say just go play mcc it just is like nah man I’m good. Same effect with infinite except infinite is a million times even worse cause they don’t even have a file share option now. It’s not even limited now like the mcc it’s just simply not there. 343 just fails to lack the importance of going all out on ur community. Bungie could’ve just added yk a theater like we have in mcc and limit everything and not have a browser and it would’ve effected the game but it definitely still would’ve been revolutionary. Instead they went even further then that. They made it so you can save ur films. Share ur films. Make a possibility of them getting on bungies favorites or on a community browser tab. Forge could’ve just been limited to 50 maps and not able to share them or anything but instead they went all out and with the help of a forge glitch to ghost blocks we made some of the most memorable custom games in halo 3. If they didn’t add what they did then the ability to ghost blocks really wouldn’t of mattered possibly ever been discovered cause no one would’ve forged enough really for it to accidentally be discovered. Even without ghosting there was still other methods to keep blocks to stay like holding them up with another block then deleting the block they sit on to not fall over cause the game still thinks it’s there. Not really probably intended but if we didn’t have all these healthy community features forge proper would’ve stayed what it was originally a map kinda small adjuster but instead it became what it did with the help of the community so then in reach they made a even better one. 343 lacks this thinking and that’s why they without really anything thought made infection what it was in halo 4 instead of realizing the importance of why it was like how it was and how much that allowed so many game modes to be made. That’s why h4 failed for custom games. It killed the community features. It had just as good of a forge as halo reach except it didn’t matter cause they killed everything else around it so then no one wanted to fuck with it people just went back to reach. Just like he said they probably will add grif ball but if they don’t add it in the original way it was crated then it completely kills the and limits the community. Just like infinite halo 4 had infection but they didn’t add it in the way it originally was made so it completely ruined everything that came from it and made it not possible. Just like if capture the flag in infinite is something you physically cannot create with the same objects as before then it really kills a lot of game modes. Power ups being pick ups I also see being a problem. People would make maps with power ups and stuff at certain points to be activated at that certain time well now thats all stripped away unless they add the original power ups to the game how they used to be. Sure alot of what bungie did never probably intend to be what it became but now that it is we can’t simply hurt them or change them cause it completely alters the possibility of that existing in infinite or new things to come from it. If they wanna do new things add new things in what was already created before. Don’t change things that were already created. It’s like taking forge clear back to what we had in h3 for really no reason killing off what we originally had. We can’t help it bungie set the bar so high and the community took the advantage of it but it happened and now that’s the bar u need to match or raise higher.
@@tamezzodiac2862 In the future, you should break up comments this size into multiple paragraphs. This is really hard to read. Also, MCC does have a fileshare. It sucks to use, but it does exist.
@@sgtcoffman it does but it lacks a file browser. That’s the point. There is no way to just browse or search for certain stuff. You have to simply just look specifically for the people you are talking about or thinking ab. That being like that tho it makes it really impossible to discover anything new or put anything new in front of an audience. All the other stuff only got popular cause you could put it in front of an audience so it only lives on through that now and people look up the videos to find the gamer tag to get what they want. Without something like that it makes it impossible for anything new to get out there.
Also I can’t make it into paragraphs or I would run out of room as it’s way too long.
“Spider-man”, whatever that mode turns out to be, will be a major custom game. It’ll use infinite grapple on maps made in forge to maximise it. Maybe you use swords and skewers. I think that would have great potential.
"The bedrock the series was built on is just as sturdy as it was 20 years ago" literally I cry every time I hear that. People have forgotten just how amazing Halo once was.
Not all of us. We just hang out in the Master Chief Collection lobbies.
So sad that I play as much (if not more) MCC than Infinite. 343i owns and operates the blueprints of the game experience they are trying to recreate and just can't.
@@samuelzuleger5134 Its not even just that either. I don't think if 343i came out with a bit more content it would've completely changed course, I think that Infinite is now competing in a market with extremely popular and more accessible games so although I do think that Forge and some basic things would've improved player retention I still doubt that the game wouldn't have leaked massive amounts of players.
So many games now; Apex, Fortnite, Warfare, Destiny 2, Valorant, CSGO, etc. So basically they came out way way too late. I do think this is the last Halo game so lets pray that the game isn't dead in another year and that 343i can do something to convince more players to play their game.
@@Thatssobluejay the game lost like 70% of its players yall need to accept its dead
It's nice to hear someone putting forward deeper convos on ttk, map fundamentals, and a real attempt at "combat evolved".
Evey halo comrade I come across thinks I'm a heretic for wanting to increase the skill gap . Rewarding higher accuracy players should be the only way.
I agree with increasing the skill gap on accuracy but I'm not sure how you do that when their aim assist is holding controller players hands and aiming for them.
1:02:46 this forge montage really demonstrates why I've always said that 343 doesn't really know how to make forging look visually appealing. Side by side next to the Bungie games, their assets look extremely flat and just awful looking. Bad lighting, no textures. Just bad. Hope it's better in infinite. Side note, I've said since Halo 3 that I wanted them to go back to projectile based weapons for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. Some people didn't like it in Halo 3 because of some hit registration issues but I don't think that would be an issue today. I feel like every medium range weapon in 343's Halo games are pretty much just long range weapons anyway because of hitscan, and it really discourages walking in the open anywhere. In Halo 3, you could cross map people with the BR but it wasn't free or easy, so a lot of the time people wouldn't bother trying. You had some room to breath. In this game and Halo 5, if you're in the line of sight, you're being shot at, no matter what.
The last 5 mins of this video blew my mind. It's such a disappointing yet exciting thought that even though Infinite is a fraction of what a Halo could be, it is still so highly regarded.
100% agree with a lot of your points and i'd like to add my own, the UI in this game seems to be very lackluster regardless of all the bugs present today. It just doesn't feel finished like its still in its demo state. Even the MCC's UI feels better than what we have right now...
This was fantastic. It honestly makes me wish I went harder on Halo Infinite in my own review. Particularly on the map design and weapon balancing. it's videos like these that humble everyone else, especially when it comes to the writing, structure and delivery. This is the best Halo Infinite review.
He is a true wordsmith indeed.
Yeah I like your videos, but your infinite review kinda sucked
@@tobsmonster2 Mind elaborating? Doesn't look very intelligent to just drop a hot take like that without elaborating. Indulge me.
@@Dalvory 2 months later...
Coming back to this video again, I feel like your criticisms have been validated. It's frustrating that people are still focusing purely on the "lack of content", which is only half the story, when a large part of the fallout is really due to the issues with the base design decisions brought up in this video which subconsciously affects everyone.
God why does 343 continue to repeat the same big mistakes like with their past titles? Unacceptable.
I agree, this is the kind of critic we desperately needed.
Skillup did a fair review too
Yes no game is perfect, we need people to speak out to resolve these issues and help get the game as close to perfect as possible
It also quite simply concludes to the harsh reality; Halo pvp is no longer relevant and we need a true return of arena shooters. Halo had it's time. A game like Quake is greatly needed at the moment.
@@BigGainer98 I think part of the problem is people expecting games to live up to their nostalgia of their first video game experiences, sorry but playing a game well into a decade of your gaming career isn’t going to blow your mind like the first ever shooter you played, Infinite has been super fun to me and I don’t personally agree with your take, also I’ve never heard of Quake and had to look it up, that game really isn’t relevant to the mass population of gamers so maybe you just have more specific taste and Halo isn’t for you
@@nathanedwards9308 Buddy if you didn't know what Quake was you probably shouldn't be the most important opinion for how good a Halo game is
This is the review we were all waiting for.
Edit: And watching the whole thing was worth it. So many things other reviewers haven’t even touched upon that greatly impact the game.
Thank you for bringing all of this to my (and many others) attention!
Finally, A Halo Creator who told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I stopped playing Halo Infinite after I beat the campaign and wasn’t interested in playing the multiplayer because of the reasons. I don’t want free to play online, fuck that, I want good content. This is why allot of causal halo fans players reverted back to playing the classic Halo games 🤷🏾♂️
My love for Halo: Reach really stemmed from those nights staying up late playing a slew of fun custom games of all kinds. Infinite has not hit the same way Halo used to for me and I'm just not a sweaty little teen nerd with the patience and time to stick it out with Halo as it is right now. I'm genuinely just waiting for forge to see if they fuck it up. At that point I'll decide if I'm dropping Halo sadly.
Bungie that's why
It still blows my mind that there's no infection.
Even though halo reach had a shit ton of problems, it had a kickass infection mode, and that was enough to keep me coming back.
Had to come back and comment again, you mentioned that Halo nowadays should have more social features than ever before, with stuff like direct sharing/uploading to social media etc.
It made me realize that while I personally wouldn't be using that, it definitely seems like the logical next step and something that'd fit Halo like a glove.
I've actually been pretty baffled at not only Halo but all major titles recently for stripping away community features. VoIP is about to go extinct, lobbies get disbanded after one match, no easy way to add people, no map voting or anything.
It's hard to face that in the past I'd stick in the same exact Halo lobby for hours, getting to know the people in them and ending my gaming night with more friends than I started with, compared to the modern reality where practically nobody chats ingame anymore and even if you made a friend in a match you will never see them again after the post match screen.
Call me a boomer or whatever but I really do feel like the gaming industry has regressed, at least in the social side of things.
I agree with this. Having the opportunity to continue playing with a group of random people I happened to gel with was the difference between me playing for an hour and staying up playing until dawn. Even though I love Infinite, I'm finding it easier and easier to put down the controller after 2 or 3 matches. It feels too impersonal. I don't care for campaign. Multiplayer is the only interesting thing about Halo to me. But it feels like I may as well be playing a single player game because of the almost total lack of meaningful social interaction and comraderie. When Halo 3 came out, I could literally playing social for 10 hours straight and by the end of that 10 hours, I still had to pry myself off the game for the sake of my health and responsibilities. With Infinite, I play a few matches and lose interest. I've changed, I'm much older now. But so has Halo, and not in all ways for the better. I think the core gameplay of Infinite is the best of any Halo game, but aside from that earlier Halo games, particularly 3, did everything better.
Just thinking back at how literally perfect in every detail Halo 3 was. Truely just makes me tear up a little on how much we missed out on with the content these days and really appreciated it back then. Personally I don't think we'll ever get that golden era back again with the on-going trend of incompetent development but would be a nice thing to dream about. Gaming as a whole has been a downward spiral for multiplayer titles lately and its a bit sad to see, especially for competitive PC players such as myself. We're scavenging everything we can to try and find stuff to fill our void of suffering because no devs seem to learn from the past.
CoD was good in its day but fail now due to the SBMM, RBMM, OP Aim Assist, and the new patent. Last good cod was MW19, which in a lot of cases had issues (what cod didn't) but it was definitely a step in the right direction. Then the series fell off again.
Same with Battlefield. BF:BC2/3/4 are the best Battlefields to date and yet everything after that failed. Same as MW19, BFV was a step in the right direction but still has some flaws to iron out. Then we have the beautiful monstrosity of 2042.
Hope one day someone steps in to wash away our pain.
halo 3 is overrated if you bothered to play anything else in the time frame of it
@@grimsvaultstreaming3956 You can have your favourites how you want but I was the no life type gamer as a kid (still am) that did play a lot of everything back on the 360 days but I keep coming back to Halo. You cant deny that nothing really compares to H3 honestly (even today) with the amount of content, balance, how unique the game is and how crazy good the community was as an fps shooter. Plus, it's fun af.
I was looking back recently on the old bungie website and seeing everyone just having fun with everything (Barely any toxicity), even with the weekly blog posts crack me up. And the fact that they all do it right by making it fun for everyone with a competitive/casual state just makes you appreciate how much they actually cared. If you think that H3 is overrated, don't think you played it enough.
Halo 3 was almost perfect. Don't include the scene of the Forerunner planet, the legendary ending should only be Chief adrift in space and going into cryosleep. The terminals should be rewritten to conclude with humanity being the Forerunners. This way it ends perfectly, with closure, and makes sure that a finished story can't continue. There can still be other Halo games.
If you go back and play the old Halo games after playing infinite, you will understand how lack luster infinite feels.
Bro I thought I was the only one thinking this. Like I hate this version of BTB. It’s so dry. Why tf did they change it.
@@kiwi__3402 but but... POWER SEEEEDS!!!
@@ripster9713 3 maps with the same aesthetic and similar layout, they dropped the ball again.
@@LiberatedMind1 "Ball Dropped"
@@kiwi__3402 And it's some how the worse form of BTB 343 has ever implemented. It hardly resembles the game mode as originally intended and is far worse off because of it.
Best halo review I’ve seen so far. Almost made me tear up on what we got and the potential this game has. I’m both optimistic and worried about this games future. I really hope they pull through before it’s too late for the community. As a die hard fan of the franchise I’m afraid that this game is too much on thin ice and hopefully they make these changes for the better soon
Game is dead 343 ruined Halo
I do think that from a player retention level, Infinite is more or less screwed :/ And as a huge halo fan who loves Infinite's gameplay and art design, that really saddens me to say. Adding a map or two every 3 months or so (which honestly seems unlikely at this point given its been 3 months since launch with zero maps added or even previewed) would do wonders for the game, but sadly I don't think the game will feel complete until all the content that really should have been there at launch is added (ie. Forge, co-op, mission select, working theater, file share system, non-battle-pass ranking system, desync and player collision issues addressed, direly needed vehicle improvements, etc.). And sadly I don't think we're going to be seeing all those things for at least another year, which sucks because even if _some_ people do come back, you only get one chance at a first impression and *many more* will be out for good.
@@343Films 2 maps every season, each season is 3 months. 8 maps new maps in a year. Halo 3 had 12 NEW MAPS in its entire life cycle, Reach had 14. Infinite will have more maps than that before year 2 of the game is over. I really get the impression Halo fans dont even know how other live service games work. Fortnite and Warzone dont get anything really until the next cod comes out or for fortnite every 3-4 months the map changes and you get a couple new guns. Apex the same thing, a new character, skins, and a map every 3-4 months. The real problem with Halo infinite is Customs and lack of forge, once those get fixed and come out.... guarantee the view on halo infinite is a 180.
@@jordan3305 the real problem is thinking every game has to be a live service title
No one said they had to be, but Halo needed to be in order to survive in today's market (fps in general at this point). People move from game to game so fast that an older halo games model wouldn't last long term. 343 just has alot of work cut out for them to get the game to a state (CONTENT WISE) to keep the season content flowconsistent. Its not impossible or that far off as some of the halo UA-cam channels want to think. But toxic fanbases and youtube channels don't help.
Thank you for saying the AR is OP. I’ve been getting melted from half way across the map… it makes my blood boil
But isn't this criticism purely based on the effective range, which is what he explicitly said was bad?
@@scrambo6182 he basically said it’s OP close to mid range and also very easy to use
It took them six years to give us half of a game, and they think their players are going to be patient enough to wait TWO YEARS FOR A CAMPAIGN EXPANSION.
Two years later no canpaign expansion 😢
@@xjekx I know... It's depressing 😭
I can agree with most of the points made in this video but personally my main problem was the open world aspect, I don’t think the open world campaign idea played out right. Like cool we have an open world but that kinda just threw aside what made the campaign so special, being able to walk around in different environments and see new places. Like in halo CE being able to go from this amazing island that was actually a forerunner entrance to an underground station or in halo 2 going from a Mine over a gas planet to an underwater elevator ride. It just made me look forward to each mission.
True, the sad thing is that they sacrificed scripted and complex missions for it. What we have is a nice but monotone, unchanging empty and mostly forgetful world with dumb AI, I would glady switch for a few standart míssion like the covenant in Halo 3. I mean they could have done so much with it, banished who tried to conquer back zones, a hub which gets bigger and more armed with more marines freed, freeing story character like Lasky or idk spartans which give marines a morale (dmg or health ) boost, patroulling UNSC convois or Banished convoice which transport weapons or vehicles. God I swear if they had intruduced the flood shortly before the end, and after the campaign you had a changing map which gets infected more and more in different steps , until you conquer them back ... that would have given player long time engagement.
Infinite is as open world as CE is open world... not much at all. They failed completely on the "open world" part.
@@LethalByChoice it is open world, but sadly an empty repetetive uninspired open world. If you compare it with elden ring ( also fromsoftwares first open world game ) it is an embarrassment. It feels like an technical alpha where they had to still add the interesting stuff.
Also none of the missions is even slightly memorable, because the scripted events you see in other Halo games are missing. It is a giant empty sandbox, where the only fun things are the grapple hook and the weapons.
@@Lmaokekw975 great callback to ce and halo 3 with the backtracking
@@Lmaokekw975 I would call souls 3 semi open world.
This is one of the best pieces of gaming analysis that I've ever seen.
its mindbogling
He should be a game engineer. His potential is immense. 343 hire this man.
Man this was just so spot on, i do like most of the maps in this game, but deep inside i do feel kinda dissapointed by them, not only because of the comparassion to the maps that defined Halo but because they all have such similar feel.
Great review, i think more people should hold Infinite to these kind of standars and not be blinded by the joy of having a new Halo like i was.
maps are literally catered to esports and comp, and not fun like how it was back then
@@TheTroller911 eSports brings in more money, surprise, corporations care more about money
@@otallono eSports is gay and companies pandering to that is a bad thing.
I miss maps like lockout, I hate this 3 lane/symmetrical bullshit.
@@otallono not always.... you don't see ANYONE talking about esports for infinite....its completely manufactured....unlike smash bros
Remember when this video was controversial? How times change
LOL no joke. The worst was that on halo waypoint if you talked down on infinite leading up to launch you were seen as an outcast. Now, there’s no one even on the forums…
HALO INFINITE GOAT 🐐 OF ALL HALOS FACTS 💯🔥🙀💯👑##
Broke me down for an hour and then put a bandaid on my broken body. I appreciate the video. Well thought out and passionate video that really nails down some serious concerns with the game. Some that I’ve had floating around the back of my head as well, but didn’t voice because I saw no one else seem to have the same opinions on it. Thank you for this. Here’s hoping halo really does manage to become infinite.
"Weapons with integrity feel good to use, and feel good to lose to."
That's exactly what the weapons designer of Halo 3, Franscois Boucher-Genesse, said in the Making Of ViDoc: weapons in the sandbox need to be fun to shoot, and fun to be shot at.
Powerful one-shot kill weapons like the shotgun and sword and SPARTAN laser can exist in both a casual and competitive sandbox. The developers properly tuned both the weapons themselves and the maps around player encounters.
It didn't feel bad to get shotgunned or hammered. That's the limited power weapons and you ended up where they're meant to be used, but next respawn you'll return with a BR and well placed frag grenades.
It doesn't feel good to lose to an AR whilst trying to hit your headshots with the BR in Infinite. You just think "why did I even bother picking up the BR?"
The BR shouldn't be better than the AR.
That would just be Halo 3 all over again.
@@MrSlashtf2 The utility weapon has always performed better than the AR.
Magnum > AR (Halo: CE)
BR > SMG (Halo 2)
BR > AR (Halo 3)
Before you say something along the lines of "Halo 2 had no AR" or "The magnum isn't a BR" or some other shallow, surface-level observation, there is more to a weapons sandbox than simply what a weapon looks like. It can take whatever appearance it wants but still perform the same role.
The Battle Rifle IS better than the Assault Rifle. It should not be consistently losing fights against the AR.
I just wish the scope doesn't switch off when using the AR, Commando, and the sniper power wepons while being shot at.
Couldn't put my finger on what was going wrong for me in these encounters. This is exactly it. I'm not perfect with my BR, never have been, but at mid range or closer I'm almost always getting melted by the AR. And when I have the AR, the outcome is basically the same for the person who happens to be going against me with the BR. It's not necessarily that the AR is overpowered, but in comparison the BR is much too difficult to use in these encounters when you take into account its effectiveness. You can basically just spray an AR like a toddler and most of the time you'll get the kill vs the BR, whereas in the case of the BR, you have to be nearly perfect to beat the AR.
Favyn has so much passion. That is the kind of guy I want building the game. The game that is good enough for him, is the game I want to play.
Your bit on the AR was great, rare to see something that multifaceted explained and shown that clearly
The friendly fire needs to revert back to the way it used to be. Aka your bullets hurt everyone, teammates included. This isn't COD
Yeah and collision physics.
Didn't some Halo 3 playlists have friendly fire off?
Why though what does it add to the game?
Also, in regards to INFINITE being a 10 year game, they meant it was going to take them 10 years to fix everything and get it to a playable state...like MCC.
🤣🤣🤣
No lie detected
I remember when I first heard the "10 year" line and immediately knew the game was going to come out half baked despite being in the oven for too long.
Think about it: what video game publisher seriously thinks a game in the current market is going to maintain a significant online player base for 10 years? Why not 8, or 12? It's just an arbitrary number used for marketing purposes.
I mean this is Halo: INFINITE, a game that was developed for 6 years but lacks most of the content Halo: Reach had, a game that was developed a decade ago in the span of one year.
@@michaelgregor1640 Youre not wrong.
@@michaelgregor1640 This not only a Halo problem, almost every new multiplayer game that has launched in the past years think it’s ok to release half baked but still charge full price. Halo Infinite it’s only redeemable because is free to play.
I still can’t believe forge wasn’t there on launch. Six years ago, SIX, they didn’t do it, and there was outrage. They had six whole years to make sure some kind of forge was there on launch, six years to rectify that simple issue.
It launched with no forge.
I actually rarely played multiplayer in halo 5. I spent most of my time playing forge. This was because the forge gamemode by that time was incredibly in depth and let you make just about anything. I was so excited to see what infinite was going to do to step it up from the previous entry in the series, only to be massively let down when it was announced forge wouldn’t be there on launch.
It’s a single issue, a small, stupid issue to most, but a massive, important issue to me. I love forge, it’s such a unique feature for a FPS to have, but it’s likely that it was deemed unimportant due to the fact that it didn’t appeal to competitive players and is now delayed until some point later this year.
While I do understand your issues with it not being there at launch I would much rather them take their time and add a much more complex forge that is better than halo 5 in everyday than give us a half assed one that needs constant updates because of issues and oversights
@@northstar_6585 True, but I still can’t help but feel disappointed.
Halo 5 was a massive project with only 3 years of dev time.
Halo Infinite was a massive project with double that amount of dev time and less features on launch and no real indication of what they’ll look like when they are launched. Correct me if I’m wrong, and I may be, but isn’t forge supposed to come out in Season 2?
I find it odd that they’ve given basically no info and no progress updates or trailers on it given the fact that it’s slated for a couple months time. I understand the surprise factor is important, but I do wish they’d at least give us as players some insight into the progress of certain features. I loved infinite’s campaign, but once I finished it, there was nothing left to do for me. I’m personally just not a big fan of the multiplayer’s gameplay and I usually don’t play a campaign again for a few months, so without forge it’s kinda just a game I love but can’t enjoy right now.
I dunno, I agree that they should take their time and give us a truly updated and reimagined forge that’s better in every way, but I also can’t help but feel let down given the lack of updates and amount of time they had to get the system working.
@@northstar_6585 not hating you but its funny that they have to take their time when they had 6 years XD now we have to wait 16 years XD!!!!!
@@northstar_6585 that’s their own fault for prioritizing the wrong things in this game
@@northstar_6585 take their time? They had years of feedback with Halo 5s launch to get it right.
This explains why I played the game for 2 weeks and havent played it sense. 343 just... STILL doesn't understand what made Halo, Halo. Its almost like they aren't even trying tbh.. its kinda sad
Exactly when I stopped playing as well. This game is so generic. Where is the uniqueness.
I'm tired if beating the same drum. But Overwatch on PC is an example of a fresh game when it came out around 2015 or 16. It's so unique and every character/weapon type takes skill and the skill gap is huge for each of them. The aim doesn't feel sticky or autoaim like. And I'm talking even compared to Halo infinite PC on Mouse and keyboard. I shouldn't "feel" when I'm hovering over an enemy with my crosshair. The aim should be more loose or slippery like Overwatch or Valorant. Much more skill based.
This video is a fucking masterpiece. Incredibly well thought out arguments and more importantly delivered in a coherent way. You can tell the criticism comes from a place of passion and hope for the future of Halo, instead of just having an expletive filled moan. This kind of work deserves a million views
Favyn has been underrated for years, he used to be a lot more aggressive in tone, but there's nearly always deliberate thoughtfulness behind his arguments.
It is a masterpiece I loved it
Love the way he starts it .. ya know, the whole "leaving hopeful about the future" vibe. Positivity is helpful. All the negativity around here sucks! LOL. jk. Halo rules. I think that the tough-love sentiment comes through crystal-clear here with all if his criticisms.
This video is crybaby central. Want a better video go watch 343 vs the world
No time stamps, the only reason why this video sucks.
I consider this video essential for any sort of feedback on Halo Infinite. Definitely worth the wait.
You cannot believe how happy I am that you made this video. After two months of "the gameplay is perfect" and "they nailed the sandbox" it's refreshing to hear a review of this game that has actual nuance and critical thinking behind it. Hats off to you, this is what 343 and the vast majority of the community needs to hear.
People have been hearing it, but it's been stiffled by ignorance and wishful thinking.
After a yearish of Halo Infinite, I came to the conclusion early on that something was… off about it.
After a couple months of not thinking much on it, I ended up getting back into Destiny and it’s gameplay. I realized what it was Infinite, and Halo as a whole, has been missing for a long time now.
Soul.
Now, ik this is a strange and very illdefined word, what is “Soul” what is the actual meaning in terms of this franchise?
My best way to describe it would be as such, the Soul of a game/franchise is the endgoal of it’s experience. For example, Destiny’s soul is an ability looter shooter, it is an FPS where you strategize weapons, class and abilities to create a play style that is enjoyable and allows you to have fun. It does this by having an ever expanding loot pool, activities, and player experiences that breeds creativity and exploration.
Or here, another game series, Marathon, while definitely older and definitely a bit… odd… compared to modern tastes, it’s Soul still works immensely when played today! Marathon’s soul has been defined by three primary characteristics, gunplay, storytelling, and immersion. Now, Marathon’s gunplay is famous as it introduced reloading and dual wielding in one of the first appearances in a FPS, it also incorporated storytelling terminals throughout the levels which made it one of the first games to really attempt to tell a compelling and interesting story within the game itself and finally it used immersive environment design and sound design to engross the player.
And finally, let’s look at the original Halo trilogy, ODST, and Reach. These games’ soul can be best described as the ‘30 seconds of fun’, IE, a rotation of weapon management, sandbox exploration, and objective playing. Yeah there were lots of popular and unpopular changes throughout the years, Favyn has acknowledged this multiple times, but overall it was in concurrence to this Soul.
So, if you’re a smart cookie you would’ve realized something, yeah these are all Bungie made games, why did I do this?
To acknowledge what ties these games together, Bungie’s “Soul” of gameplay innovation.
With each series, bungie is innovating the way their games play, not in implementing new movement mechanics, overpowered weapons, or underpowered weapons.
They did it by creating a ‘30 seconds of fun’, a loop of scenarios that continuously challenges your knowledge of the mechanics, utilities, and gameplay so that you can play and enjoy the experience.
That’s what Halo Infinite is missing, Soul of innovation and experience.
Honestly my biggest issue with Infinite is how PC gameplay feels tacked on.
Like....it works, but it's just not designed for Halo's gameplay at all, you have to control your weapon spread to be accurate, by making sure you fire when bloom is at it's lowest.
Meanwhile, plug in a controller, and you can have fun as you'll gain bullet magnetism and aim assist, two things Halo has always had, the weird clash between competitive shooter aiming and casual Halo aiming is just weird for the game imo, and it actively hurts the PC crowd and pushes them away, why play a game where you're literally at a bigger disadvantage than a controller user is against a kb+m user in something like Call of Duty?
EDIT: It also creates a massive divide on how the weapon sandbox is viewed, imo, 90% of the guns outside of the AR and Pistol suck, because they don't kill fast enough on KB+M to warrant using, at least against controller users, if I'm on controller, I use every weapon in the sandbox, on kb+m? the plasma pistol if I can be bothered, and obv the power weapons
Remember driving around on Sandtrap in a Warthog as Infected ran at the speed of light behind you trying to catch you?
Ah, the good ol' days.
Make custom games fun again!
I'm a firm advocate for believing in the fact that Infinite should've been delayed till fall 2022, and it is apparent in the final product that this is the case. 2022 is going to be a very rough year for Halo Infinite, but I believe everything Favyn discussed is 100% correct and will be fixed in the distant future. Here is to high hopes.
I think Halo Infinite can be held for 10 years. It’s not impossible, all 343 needs to do is have people in the studio go on a massive UA-cam spree and digest all the information they can. The campaign is definitely going to get DLC and the multiplayer is close to being there. To put it in perspective, Halo is doing better than CoD in the competitive scene. That doesn’t even make sense typing that out. Everything is there, they just need to work on fixing and listening to the community, which they are doing. No doubt if done correctly, the 10 year plan will be successful in the long run.
it had 6 years to cook, I think at some point delays start to harm a game's development.
@@mosesdevadass6056 you are literally cooked if you think this game is gonna last any longer then 2 years lol. This game is already dying and with all these bug issues pushing back future releases. More and more players are moving on to other games
@@williamcarulli if Halo 3 is still being played today people will still play Halo Infinite for more than two years.
@@williamcarulli You must’ve not read me correct. I think it can last 10 years, if it actually will who knows. It has faced massive drops in player count but we’re not even 3 months into the game. It sucks that we now live in a period where games are messed up at launch, but give 343 some time. I don’t think they did a good job taking over Bungie but at least give them the chance to make it right. If the game is still bad after several years, then I still stand by the fact that this should last 10 years. Microsoft should let Halo rest for a while, it acquired a ton of studios that can certainly fill in the void. Halo has been the selling point for the last 20 years, I know the releases themselves take quite a while but development for a new game takes much longer. Sit down, get a new studio, and I’d say develop the new game for 7 years. That is a long time, but with a longer time frame studios tend to expand more on the product.
1:14:12 “We know what to build on now.” Honestly, this makes me more sad than anything, because we have been screaming this at 343 for damn near ten fucking years, and they are only just now learning that fans of this franchise knew what the fuck they were talking about.
Your point just around the 57:00 mark about the guns being too effective making it feel MORE sweaty is one I totally hadn't considered but actually encompasses my number one issue with Infinite that I didn't even consciously realise. In MCC, you'd get games that felt like you dominated, or games with that one four digit username you were always going to lose to because he's been playing the game every day for ten years. It was cut and dry. In Infinite, every game feels a little too difficult (to me, as a casual player who comes top of their team roughly half the time), because even when you're playing against players you should be dominating, the guns are so easy to use you can still lose if you're not top of your game, and don't even think about trying to win if you're playing against veterans.
also has to do with shield recharge time
You’re right man. I wish it was like the good old days when everyone would use the same exact combo with the same gun over and over and ignore 90% of weapons on the map. aaaahhh classic Halo.
@@jacksonrelaxin3425 working at 343 eh.
@@Jackie_Fhan he’s probably an h5 kid
This is the best critique I've ever heard, and I 100% agree with every single one of your salient points. It's why the community is in a massive uproar-we all SEE the potential. Halo is returning to its core identity, but so much is missing, broken, and malformed. It can be so much better, and it would be the biggest thing in over a decade. Yet it launched in such a pitiful state. We all yearn for more; for better; for Halo as we all remember it, but even better. I hope it gets there.
Why are y’all so dramatic
@@drunkenn1nja debating new decisions when its been shown that 343 is listening in some capacity. why just blankly accept what's given to you when you can directly influence it into a better experience for all.
@@drunkenn1nja Halo has been one of the most important parts of my life since 2001 and it's been mishandled for far too long. Don't be judgmental prick
@@drunkenn1nja
Because this game franchise means so much to us. If it does not to you, then I'll politely ask you to leave this video.
38:53 I think this is the reason the BR felt so inconsistent to me. I’m used to aiming for the head, and trying to control the recoil, rather than letting the recoil lead me to the head.
Same for me! Aim for the heart not the head lol.
thats how you use the halo 3 br always aim center mass never the head, aiming at the head is more of a halo 2 style since that game was hitscan i like projectile more since it makes btb fun.
Yea. And it’s a horrible design as he explains very well here . Please make headshots matter and feel rewarding
I didn't expect to watch this entire video... but you literally took all of my incomplete thoughts and feelings and laid it out in front of me.
Primarily on the AR piece, most weapons in the game I feel no desire to pick up because they have a niche where the AR is an equivalent to multiple niches.
I think the sad reality is that this is hands down the best shooter release this year, and yes it's a let down to halo, but also speaks waves of the current industry standards.
The last part of your comment really resonated with me. I didn't expect to watch this video in its entirety either, and now after I feel conflicted but I still want to play lol..but how do I enjoy it knowing so much is missing/broken?? Even if I have a great run of winning games I'm just gonna be thinking about how nothing I do will reflect my ability its all unbalanced, RNG, and network bugs..
To be honest, it's an improvement, compared on Halo 5 for me.....
Yeah....the shooter genre is in bad shape.
Look at old arena shooters and see how much more fun they were. fortnite and pubg success with yearly cod kinda runined it
@@ThePTBRULES I agree, it's been the best shooter in quite some time imo.
@@JTBergen95 overwatch blows out any shooter of this last decade and it's not even close. I've played them all.
Valorant is an argument, but i don't think it launched with a respawning mode
This video needs to be spread around the halo community as much as possible, if we want change to happen now is the time to get our voices heard. Like this video and share it if you guys care about the future of this game and the franchise.
Voices are already being heard, big change doesn't come in a day development wise, they have a path, things are being actively worked on, and highest priority is fixing BTB lobbies and Cheating now that they fixed the store and prices.
@@dyllanweich this is very true, however balance patches should be a part of the development pipeline and 343i is not a tiny indie dev company that we should treat with patience. The problems outlined in this video are extremely important and depending on how 343 handles moving forward from this, the game will be drastically different. It could be good or bad, however I also believe that the solutions this video presents are the correct direction to take the combat, as if we look back at halo 3 which is where the design philosophy used in the video comes from mainly, it worked very well in that game, BR balancing, I mean. I believe this is also an opportunity to make the AR less frustratingly bad as the halo 3 AR was, because we are starting off with a more powerful AR. But mainly I just agree that weapons should be balanced around difficulty of use instead of effective ranges because effective ranges caused artificial difficulty, such as bloom for the sniper.
Nah the Halo subreddit will continue to pretend the game is perfect and there is no issues
@@malazan6004 The Halo subreddit has been doing the exact oppsoite.
Imo, people aren't praising Infinite because it's an amazing Halo game. People are praising Infinite because it's better than Halo 5; With the modern halo standards set so low, mediocre and standard *is* amazing.
In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.
#Modern Gaming
If CoDWF and BF2042 weren't so horrible, this wouldn't have been successful.
That's exactly WHY the game is terrible and failing tho! If they actually gave people what they fucking wanted since Halo Reach, the game would do much better, but everything is so mediocre, "safe", and they clearly didn't intend to revert back to their roots much at all, its all fucking nostalgia baiting my guy.
Also if you really compare the two, in actuality this game is NOT better than 5. It's different. Campain was better than 5, I guess, but 5's multiplayer is better than Infinite's. It's that simple. To say Infinite is better than 5 is simply misleading and not true. Even if the game was better than 5, that doesn't mean its a good game.
"It's not hard to improve on garbage." - Price
Or maybe just some people like the game? Im not defending 343s crap but its almost as annoying seeing people trying to find excuses to explain people actually enjoying things cause they just like it
@@Ace-hz9dr I'm not saying that people liking infinite is wrong. I'm saying that in comparison to Bungie's work, Infinite could have been so much better. On its own, Infinite is fine. but against the OG trilogy or even Reach, it just, falls so short from the mark.
I can't express how well done this video is. While I feel I find the game more fun than you do (from the sounds of it) I still agree with every point made and I appreciate the critism. This video really was a masterpiece and it felt like a journey. Love the videos keep up the hard work!
Everything you talked about in this video equals my sentiments exactly. Bravo.
Infinite really should have been delayed further but I am willing to bet that the decision was made to put it out in its current state because it was "playable" 6 years of development with maybe 18 months more needed to deliver a fully featured product. They were way over budget and needed to start making money.
Agreed. Tired of people saying it's in beta or just being accepting of it being incomplete and accepting the devs excuses.
Delaying it further wouldn’t have mattered, they had 6 fucking years. It doesn’t matter how much time you give a bad studio, you’ll only ever receive a bad game.
The Campaign was indeed mediocre (I completed it twice) and the Multiplayer feels barebones compared to even Halo 5. Where is Firefight? Where is the military ranking system like we had in Reach. It’s disappointing….
Multiplayer will revitalize in August
lol halo 5 dropped with fuck all and didn't even have firefight
This video made me precisely understand my own sentiments about Halo Infinite and why I feel some cognitive dissonance when I talk about this game positively. It's disappointing because it clearly demonstrates a potential to live up to and quite possibly surpass the legacy of what Halo is, and yet so far fails to live up to that potential in every regard. But being that Halo is now a live service game it's not too late for Infinite to live up to that potential. But we're not gonna get there unless we are vocal about where the game is currently falling short.
Your section about the sandbox was incredibly profound, and I believe it perfectly explains why I've been playing fiesta almost exclusively for the last couple weeks: it's somewhat immune to people falling into the toxic gameplay trends you mentioned because the randomized weapons forces you to change up your play style each life and actually encourages you to get good at using every weapon. I sincerely hope the issues you raised about toxic gameplay trends get addressed or else I fear this game might spiritually become more like CoD than Halo. Your point about bloom, RNG, and integrity perfectly explains why I've been finding that weapons that don't have bloom are more satisfying to use; case in point I prefer the disruptor over the. sidekick.
343 really really shit the bed with not having custom games and forge ready on day one because they could've then leveraged the community's creativity and passion to make up for the lack of content in other areas of the game. I sincerely hope that all their resources are being put towards getting custom games and forge out and the rest of the "halo infrastructure" you mentioned ASAP because the lack of that stuff might be the real death of this game.
I AM SO HAPPY THAT YOU WENT IN DEPTH ON 343'S PATHETIC MAP WORK!
This has been an issue for me since Halo 4 and 5, they are really bad at map design for Halo, especially when it comes to 4v4 maps in the past.
I barely ever see UA-camrs going in depth with this issue and this has honestly been my biggest worry with Infinite right now over every other problem. I know they'll eventually fix problems like desync, I'm not sure about them ever making great halo maps like The Pit, Narrows, or Lockout. I'm sure they'll try to remake classic Halo maps only to find out it doesn't fit the damn sandbox and will ruin it like Halo 4's Pit version........This has been their biggest inconsistency with every Halo title, is the maps.
Such a breath of fresh air to hear this serious critique after all the near mindless positivity surrounding the core gameplay since launch. I was beginning to think I was the only one who was extremely unsatisfied with the core gun balancing and map designs. Your video also highlight issues I had but wasn’t even consciously aware of. Bravo.
Mindless positivity?
What kind of circles have you been restricting yourself to? Game has been consistently bashed (justifiably or otherwise) since *way* before launch.
@@HeliosDrive UA-cam was flooded with reviews showering the game in high praise when the campaign launched.
@@isaaclai1636 Yet this is a review focusing on the multiplayer, which was released earlier and has been under consistent scrutiny since then.
Funny how that works.
@@HeliosDrive True enough that there have been aspects that 343 has been taking heat for since before day one like progression and customization but the core gameplay was being praised like the second coming of Jesus when multiplayer first launched (at least on most of the halo focused channels and spaces like r/halo that I was seeing). The overwhelming prevailing sentiment was that the core mechanics were nearly flawless and that it was just the content surrounding the core gameplay that had issues. You were considered crazy if you had criticisms like the ones outlined in the video concerning the fundamental balancing of the sandbox, particularly if you wanted an assault rifle nerf. The positivity around the gameplay was also used to deflect criticism of other aspects of the game. It was just very frustrating to see so many people blatantly ignore problems with the game both mechanically or otherwise. It also made me nervous that 343 would perceive the feedback as a green light to further pursue their flawed balancing philosophies into the future of both infinite and other games, which would alienate me and others like me from being able to enjoy participating in new halo experiences and leave us stuck playing MCC forever or just giving up on halo altogether. Infinite felt like a chance to get classic fans back into the series after alienating them for over a decade and for me it completely missed the mark.
@@sebastianoliver7108 well said
Dude I cannot thank you enough for laying out my underlying thoughts about this halo infinite's core gameplay. Perhaps I was just blinded by my fantasy of seeing this game as the next halo 3 that I lied to myself in saying that it's super amazing. It is not. It was nice at first because it was a fresh halo game. I however, began to feel these underlying issues almost immediately after the game's "early beta launch." The maps, the weapons, etc. all have deep seeded issues, and the pitiful launch "content" and lack of player freedom didn't help either. I have barely touched infinite in the past month or so but I still play it from time to time, but I just don't have the desire to play it, and I want to feel that desire so bad, but I can't lie to myself about my true feelings. This is probably your magnum opus and is my favorite video on this channel. Keep up the amazing content dude. You deserve at least a million subs lol.
Absolutely the best video you have ever made and thats coming from someone that thinks all of your videos are incredible. Every issue with the game is fully covered and helped me understand some of the nagging issues I couldn’t quite understand. Honestly if Halo 3 and even Reach came out now they would be the most popular games with the amount of content and social media/streaming helping out. Here’s to hoping that Infinite will eventually get this stuff back.
This was the best video I've watched in forever. I'm not gonna lie when you first started I was skeptical, but now I don't just agree with your points, I feel validated that a lot of the bullshit kills at spawn or the "why the fuck does this weapon seem useless" moments I've had are not just me. I'd throw the sniper right there at the top. I'm fine with it being difficult to use, but it shouldn't feel worthless to pick up because you're just gonna get outgunned by an essentially hitscanned BR. This video made me realize why my dad and I played so many hours of halo reach snipers. Yeah it was a 1 shot kill to the head, but it wasn't a handout by any means. If you got body shotted by an enemy, you could even the score with your skill alone and headshot them. The potential for upsets and counterplay made you feel in control and that there was always still a chance of winning. That's something the AR and the BR alike blatantly fail at in this game. And also the shock rifle imo is a bullshit substitute for a traditional plasma pistol. How anyone can argue that an EMP instant sniper is good for the sandbox is beyond me. Vehicles feel worthless in this game partially due to that and having low health in general. Halo infinite makes me feel like two studios fought each other up until its release on the direction it should've taken. One half was a team of actual halo fans who wanted to extend the vision of bungie, and the other half cared more about monetization and "modern gaming" elements to the point where they forgot that a GOOD halo game will sell itself, and doesn't need to be free to play to break records.
Perfect analysis. You explain why dying feels too cheap, and aiming feels so strange in Infinite. I’ve felt like something was off with the weapons since the flights I just couldn’t articulate like you.
I’ve been playing Halo 3 a lot more lately and nostalgia aside, the game just feels better. Combat encounters had this back and forth nature to them, where you’d get locked into 1v1s for a bit then return to the objective or whatnot. But in Infinite you just rip through people or they rip through you, everything feels too quick or easy or frustratingly cheap. These issues only become more prevalent the more I play.
It’s sad to say but after almost 3 months of Infinite I’m noticing more issues. But after 15 years of Halo 3 I’m learning more and more about how well it was designed.
It really says something when one games mechanics are exposed as pretty not great and fatiguing within 2 months of launch, while another's has existed and been scrutinized for 15+ years and still feels great to this day.
By 1v1 for a bit you mean missing melee hits like headless chickens until one eventually gets hit and dies?
@@alejandromomota6934 no
Bungie baby
this is by far the best video youve ever made. its a shame you dont have a large audience to actually push your ideas it extremely important that larger influencers echo your ideas and create a movement to make these changes
You nailed my exact problems with the maps. People have been trying gaslight me on this, the maps aren't good, they aren't bad either, they're just so damn boring compared to legacy maps. Maps in infinite don't feel like Halo maps, they feel like "playspaces" or maps from other shooters. All but 2 of the non-btb maps in infinite are the same halo 5 style paintball arenas. I would prefer 10 random halo 2 maps with no graphical upgrade at all over our current selection in infinite.
We REALLY needed forge at launch...
Addition: And 1 hour and some change later and this video was a fukn masterpiece. Every single problem I have with halo infinite that I've been trying to communicate to people, all hit dead on 100%. If infinite launched content-wise on parity with Reach, regular 60$, no MTX F2P, ingame store bullshit, I swear on my life it would be the biggest FPS out right now, and that it wouldn't even be a close contest. The head of 343 needs to be put in a chair and forced to watch this, I can only imagine where we'd be if 343 had this philosophy when developing infinite.
I thought the head of 343 was now Joe Staten, or at least he was given a seat of immense power to fix it. I read somewhere that Joe gave an interview and revealed some of the staggering changes he made in the game, like 343 not considering giving the Marines AI in the campaign because they didn't expect them to move around at all or something. Shit like that reveals to me how much Joe has worked to reverse some of the 343 damage to the series in infinite, I don't know how far that reaches into the multiplayer, but man. The situation was even more dire than it is now before he came back.
@@NFS0038 imagine if he was there from the start to steer the game in a better direction early on
@@NFS0038 Pretty sure there's still people above Joe that can cause us further problems. If Joe is the one responsible for taking halo from BAD to almost good then I thank him for that, he should have been in charge from the start of this game's development. Still, if he is mitigating 343's damage, it still sucks we have to wait SO damn long on unfucking this game when it should have just launched proper. As it stands current players of Infinite will be working as unpaid QA for 343 for several months.
Can we stop completely missing the term gaslight, please
@@Vashkey Am I using that wrong? I thought it was trying to make somebody believe they are the only one who thinks a certain way.
The easiest way to balance the AR is simply to keep it's current TTK, keep it's current range but nerf the hell out of the autoaim/bullet spray cone.
Your reticle can be like 2 metres off target and you're still awarded with a kill.
The simply fix is to just make the AR mechanics more similar to the minigun in Quake 3.
That would keep everyone happy. The AR is still useful, it can still beat a BR but it now requires far more skill to use and it's not turned into a sidearm.
6 years of development time for this huge lack of content feels pretty weird
I’ve heard 343 Cut a large amount of content in its development, If you seen the concept art there was scarabs, wild life, different biomes, also I have heard that the story was going to be a bit longer it wasn’t suppose to begin at the infinity being destroyed . it’s disheartening knowing what this game could have been
@@theelite5135 They had 6 years lol and btw the engine they're using isn't a brand new engine, the Slipspace Engine is based off of previous Halo 5 engine, it even has leftover strings from Halo 5, Halo CE, etc.
@@kianh.76 yeah I’ve heard, I’ve seen the game cheat videos
Games may "technically" be in development for six to 7 years but often time they are redone over and over again to the point that that the actual development of the end product is more like 2 or 3 years. Halo Infinite as a game was redone several times. The actual game was likely developed within 2 and a half years as opposed to actually taking six years.
@@theelite5135 bear in mind that concept art isn’t necessarily content that was cut. Sometimes it’s just artists having fun and making art within the universe to get the team excited or to spark ideas.
Honestly agree with your thoughts on the AR. I loved the AR in 3 because it felt like a great close range utility weapon, bounce a frag around a corner and finish close with the AR. Not, lob a nade across the map and mow someone down across the arena
Lol the AR in 3 was not a good close range weapon. It was dogshit at close range and completely useless at any other range. The only way you could get kills with that gun was to follow up with a melee. I always remembered discarding that piece of garbage after finding literally any other gun.
@@casecao8412 Mainly talking about post-netcode fix in mcc. But even before then I’ve been able to score plenty of kills with it so it must be an issue with everyone else 🤷♂️ it’s all about positioning, smart play, and pacing the shots.
Case just sucks with it
as much as people may disagree, one thing they cant say is that favyn doesnt know halo. excellent examination of halo infinite within the context of halo's design history
He know alot better then 343 simps on reddit thats for sure.
I denied it at first but yeah, the BR absolutely needs to be adjusted.
I can't really justify it being as good as it is when comparing it to the Stalker rifle.
I just want to add that when you said this was less than 1-3 in terms of maps it is also less than reach-5 as well.
This was honestly an exceptional analysis of what is wrong with Infinite. I was only a child when I started playing Halo and though I’ve lost touch with the series since the release of 4, Infinite reminded just how much of a joy it is to play Halo. Just like you said, if this can resonate with us with only a fraction of what Halo used to be then surely we should hold it to the highest standards and lust for more. Thank you for showing me what I always knew.
This video could have seriously provided me with enough content to write my own hour long video. I love it.
The rapid fire section has some things I’d like to discuss:
BR is definitely too easy to use for what it’s for. You briefly mentioned the Stalker Rifle in the rapid fire, and I think those two guns in comparison with one another show the flaws that the BR has. The Stalker Rifle kills SO FAST with a perfect, but it feels very hard to land a perfect. I don’t know why exactly it feels this way. Maybe it’s actually too accurate for its own good. The BR is like “aim in this general direction and your shots will connect” while the Stalker Rifle’s reticle is SO ACCURATE that you can shoot between people’s legs and miss if you aren’t careful enough. Not only that, but the Stalker rifle lacks that same recoil that the BR has meaning you actually have to aim for the head manually in the middle of the fight with a gun so precise it could shoot the wings off a fly without killing it. Combine that with being peppered with BR shots which causes you to lose your scope and you find yourself in a situation where you’re probably better off just using the BR at long ranges.
I talked about bloom in another comment I made, but I’m not a fan of it either. I think the RNG aspect is a factor in deterring the desire to seek out better performing weapons as you can outgun any opponent who has the same weapon as you as long as you get luckier than they do with their shots. That kills the aspect of bringing a different gun to the fight. If the guns aren’t symmetrical when used against each other (minus some skill difference) then why find a new gun? If I can just get lucky with bloom and win a symmetrical fight against a clone of myself using the same gun, am I really that encouraged to go out there and find a different gun?
The Commando is a gun that I rarely use because of how inconsistent it is. I legit can’t find a situation I’d prefer to have it over other guns. I love the gun in theory, but it has so many flaws including the bloom.
It’s like they wanted a gun that was fully automatic but was also a DMR at range so that’s what they created. It doesn’t feel good, and it doesn’t really feel like it shines anywhere. I’m going to lose to a BR at range. I’m probably going to lose to an AR or sidekick up close.
So wtf.
The section on Griffball is honestly sad, Halo Infinite has a baked in throwing mechanic, we could've had a more complex Griffball with long range passing, and players with grappling hooks to intercept passes
We all miss those high ground guardian and last resort type intricacies
"Honey wake up, there's a new Favyn video"
Leaving this comment mostly for engagement, can't wait to watch this when I get home, there's a disappointing lack of focused criticism toward this game, though I doubt 343 will make any truly foundational changes.
Edit: Hit the nail on the head as always, this might be your most concise Halo video ever.
On Last Resort in Halo 3, when you spawn on the beach, you can take the ghost through the ruins, past the sniper, past the rocks and into the broken wall in the factory. I always do this because people don't expect it and it's funny. I guarantee, if you know what you're doing, the ghost is an incredible defender on Last Resort; on the *second floor.* The ghost is easy to be stealthy with on Halo 3 (disappears off radar when not moving) and it fits perfectly on the second floor. You can easily navigate, survive and defend the flag or bomb plant point easily, *from the second floor." Teammates calling you trash? Look on the brightside angry teammate, the last thing the flag carrier will expect is a ghost splattering them...from the second floor
Halo Infinite? Um, well I played on that one map that looks like 3 other maps in the game 👁👄👁
Nice to see someone saying it, though. I agree. The maps are pretty, handful of cool ones...but overall why I avoid the game. Not only is it hard to unlock stuff, the maps bore me.
Wow, absolutely hit the nail dead on the head with this one. At a time when the majority of the internet was praising this game you called out every single problem the game had and predicted that the rest of the halo community would eventually feel their effects.
I uninstalled in December. This game was dogshit since it came out
@@markz5173all cap 🧢🧢🧢🧢🧢 it only needed content the gameplay is og goat 🐐 and we all know it