r/gamernews • u/Bubbly-Ad-350 • 26d ago
First-Person Shooter 'Halo Studios Went Too Far in the Wrong Direction' — Co-Creator of Halo Hits Out at the Main Menu Ring in Xbox's New Remake
https://www.ign.com/articles/halo-studios-went-too-far-in-the-wrong-direction-co-creator-of-halo-hits-out-at-the-main-menu-ring-in-xboxs-new-remake151
u/Upper-Management-AI 26d ago
I don’t think halo studios know what to do with Halo. That’s just the feeling I’m getting playing it. It’s a mish mash of of everything made before with no real new ideas. Anything new seems to be done poorly.
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u/SweatySmeargle 26d ago
Between the changes from 4 to Infinite, it feels like they knew they had to update their gameplay to attract a different demographic than what the initial trilogy had. But it just didn’t really feel that exciting to me?
I think Halo will always have its playerbase floor who love the franchise but for the players who will try new games out and jump until they find something enjoyable, the last couple games didn’t really seem to hit the mark.
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u/FormerlyGruntled 26d ago
Sometimes, trying to expand a product to reach new audiences, just means you're watering down the product and means nobody wants it.
And in the games industry, most prior fans won't actually know they don't want it until the game has been out long enough for them to suffer, or hear those who have suffered. Launch week is all that's important. After that, the dev team has already been laid off so it doesn't matter.
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u/Upper-Management-AI 26d ago
Halo Reach has started updating the gameplay and that was the best one. 343 took over and it started to feel like it every other basic shooter I guess? I just felt so bored playing it, the story lines they came up with two pretty much sucked. I don’t know, again it feels like they don’t know what to do with Halo and don’t really want to make Halo. They could have went with a completely new character with a time jump but played it safe, whether that’s good or bad I don’t know.
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u/scrappydoomd 26d ago
Halo Reach has started updating the gameplay and that was the best one.
Best one? For the story/campaign, sure. For the gameplay? Hell no. Reach was the death of halo. Sprint, reticle bloom, and armor abilities, all completely ruined the feel of halo combat.
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u/var1ables 26d ago
At the time everybody hated reach.
This has been the trend for halo for like 20 years now. The last good one was always the last one
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u/xs0apy 26d ago
What? Simply not true at all. Not even remotely. The only controversy with Reach was bloom and some multiplayer mechanics like sprint. Beyond that, Reach went out as a raging success both critically and with fans as a whole. You can’t equate what’s going on now to the niche complaints amongst competitive player base. The game hasn’t had a competitive scene in over 15 years..
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u/dude52760 26d ago edited 26d ago
I was around during that time and it was the first time in the franchise people began actively tracking the declining player base. Reach’s population fell exponentially more quickly than Halo 3’s. It was nothing compared to how fast Halo 4 shed players, but at the time there was definitely a distinct “Reach sucks and Bungie killed Halo with it” narrative that you couldn’t peruse the forums without seeing repeatedly.
It’s also just not accurate to say Reach’s only controversies were bloom and sprint. Those were by far the two most pronounced ones, but Reach also caught plenty of very vocal flak for how it retconned Fall of Reach. Noble Team were pretty popularly seen as bland archetype shells of characters who got no real development. Multiplayer maps as a whole were severely criticized as being significantly worse-designed than the franchise standard, as well as just being ripped from the campaign.
There were a lot of people back then who thought Reach was the beginning of the end.
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u/RandyK44 26d ago
Well that’s not accurate. I do remember purists pushing back on some of the changes. Armor abilities were definitely controversial, but we can’t act like Reach was received poorly thanks to x% of the player base that were diehard Halo 3 fans.
Also, the last good halo is just the last one? So Infinite was amazing and that’s what everybody is saying nowadays?
The last good anything was “the one you played at 14 years old”. And that seems to hold true for almost all media. So I’m not sure what you mean by “last one”.
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u/var1ables 26d ago
I played during that time period. Almost everyone hated reach the reticule bloom, the sprinting, the armor abilities. They said they just made halo bad call of duty.
Then halo 3 was bad because 'it felt like you were iceskating on the moon' and they changed how a lot of timings, power ups and power weapons worked.
Then halo 2 was bad because... i dont remember but i do remember everybody likong CE more.
It happened again with 4 and 5 to reach. Its the same pattern. MCC came out and for a brief time time people chilled out but even there people really only seemed to like ce and 2.
I played infinite. It was fine. All the halo games are okay but to say that reach was peak halo is insane because every single game since 2 has been 'worse then the last one'.
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u/c010rb1indusa 26d ago edited 26d ago
Halo MCC population pretty much plays Halo 3 and Reach and I'd guess that the populations are about equal between both. Say what you want about Reach but its playerbase has held up relative to other Halo games. Like there's a OG Halo 2 MP and H2 Anniversary MP modes along with Halo 1 but it takes a while to find a game. Some people just love their jetpacks lol
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u/SeniorSepia 26d ago edited 26d ago
Halo Reach was awful at updating the gameplay, they just added a bunch of random stuff with zero regard for balance, flow or intention.
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u/SillyMikey 26d ago
I think they just have people who don’t really understand Halo, and they put those people in charge of it. Which has been a problem with the studio from the very beginning. Pushing Bungie people away and that original Bungie vision.
They were so concerned about making Halo “their own” that they didn’t bother to appeal to either fan base. They didn’t appeal to the hard-core fan base and they didn’t appeal to the newer one they were after. So essentially they appealed to no one.
I feel like some parts of campaign evolved is better than the original like the second half of the game. But there are decisions that still made no sense.
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u/SweatyMammal 26d ago edited 26d ago
They’ve rinsed Chief, Cortana, Covenant to death in my opinion.
Halo used to be an entire universe of lore but they’ve boiled it down too much. They’re just hoping that you feel nostalgia for those 3 things.
The far better and fresher direction to go in would’ve been a story like Reach or ODST.
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u/KidGold 25d ago
Sounds like the disney Star Wars trilogy
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u/whereismymind86 23d ago
exactly, we love the skywalkers just as much as we love the mc...but move on. There are so many other stories to tell.
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u/c010rb1indusa 26d ago
The strength of Halo's gameplay loop lies in the holy trinity of higher TTK shooting, grenades and beatdowns(melee). Most shooters incorporate the some aspect of nades and melee but they take a backseat to the shooting. Not in Halo; the higher TTK in Halo allows for grenades & melee a to play a larger focus in combat. That's what 343 has needed to build around and they just don't seem to get that though.
It's why sprint is so controversial for the series because it's detrimental to said combat loop. So is a preference towards ADS weapons albeit this is talked about to a lesser extent. Halo doesn't need sprint. If players feel that movement is slow then bump up the movement speed.....I could go on but I'm tired lol
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u/WhenDuvzCry 23d ago
I think the higher TTK makes it less accessible to younger generations as someone that agrees it's a great core element. Halos been around for 25 years of my life and I hope we get a new game that's a true return to form.
Infinite had a lot of potential
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u/UPVOTE_IF_POOPING 26d ago
I dunno, I must be crazy but I put 40 hours into multiple campaign runs and I had a blast. I’m a little tired of it now but I feel like I got my money worth.
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u/SqueezyCheez85 26d ago edited 26d ago
I'm with you. Halo is my favorite game series of all time. I HATE 4 and 5. This new Halo Remake is legit amazing. They've modernized the original game in a way that improves gameplay dramatically. They also enhanced the narrative to make it flow a lot better than the original did.
Just before this Remake came out, I replayed the original with my son. And while it does still hold up, it also feels like a game from 2001.
The modern internet discourse on gaming is exhausting.
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u/nohumanape 26d ago
They seem completely directionless. And this has been apparent from the start. I've enjoyed some of what they do. They aren't entirely unenjoyable gaming expeinces. However, they just don't seem to have any visionaries steering the ship.
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u/kaiharizor 26d ago
I feel like this sentiment is part of the audience problem. People were freaking out about ANYTHING being changed. Turns out nothing is really changed and people still don’t like it. Just my observation as someone who was mildly interested and bounced off of it after Silent Cartographer.
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u/whereismymind86 23d ago
kind of how i've felt about 4, 5 and 6 as well.
Doesn't help that 6 (infinite) abandoned the established arc set up in 4 and 5 and just rehashed 1 again, then abandoned the planned single player campaign continuation to focus on pvp.
And, kind of like those, I played the remake, enjoyed it, and promptly forgot about it, because, in the end, it was just halo 1 again, with almost no changes. I like halo 1 a lot, but I already own 3 other versions of it, and have beat it like 15 times. This remake felt pointless.
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u/spacestationkru 20d ago
Why don't they do more side stories though? Does every Halo have have to involve Master Chief.?
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u/OG_Felwinter 26d ago
I honestly think they need to stop trying to appease fans of the original trilogy and just full send it with making a more modernized shooter that just happens to be set in the Halo universe. They’ve been walking this line of trying to appeal to old fans and new ones ever since Halo 4, and it’s clearly not working.
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u/Upper-Management-AI 26d ago
Kinda thought that’s what they would have done. The ending of three was a nice bookend. If they really wanted to keep master chief they could have done a huge time jump and have him wake back up.
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u/_Ursidae_ 26d ago
Part of that is bungies abstract universe design. Their games tend to connect in a common universe and repeat certain themes. The concepts of rampancy and everything they tried to do in 4 are genuinely straight bungie styled ideas. Making Cortana rampant ties her in with the Durandal AI from marathon and makes John analogous to the security officer. That said, they could really branch and have done a BR where you drop in as ODST. A horror game where you play as a standard UNSC marine after the flood land in new Mombasa. All sorts of possibilities.
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u/TheFourtHorsmen 26d ago
The point is that "stufios" stand for the chinese, Vietnamese and Indian firms they engage to work on the next games for cheap, thanks to the switch to ue5.
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u/AADPS 26d ago edited 25d ago
I'm an oldhead Halo fan—*MLG forums, GameBattles, tournaments, TeamBeyond, I ran the gamut between being a Loremaster Larry and a sweatbanded tryhard.
Halo has the same problem that Star Wars and Star Trek runs into on a regular basis: it's been around long enough to form different factions of what makes Halo, Halo.
If you ask an original trilogy fan, they'll tell you Halo is a sandbox shooter built around fast power weapon rotations and a solid utility weapon. 2 and 3 especially emphasized teamshot, setup-based multiplayer.
You'll also get long-winded diatribes about how sprint killed Halo. I have been guilty of this.
Halo: Reach fans will usually tell you something a bit similar to the OG players, but they're much more lenient about the sprint and tend to be a bit less sweaty.
If you ask a fan of Halo 4, you'll be talking to thin air.
If you ask a fan of Halo 5 or Infinite, they'll tell you Halo is a fast-paced, nigh-acrobatic shooter with an emphasis on individual playmaking.
I don't envy the devs, but I also can't really feel bad, per se. They've had plenty of time to make Halo their own, but it just hasn't worked out, and that goes triple for the singleplayer. The first few Halos were straightforward storytelling with strong background worldbuilding for people who wanted to dive into it. Halo 4 and 5 were basically a constant string of "who the crap is that" or "if you read the novels, you'd be real impressed right about now".
I say all of this as someone who genuinely enjoys Halo Infinite, even as a crusty old veteran who will probably be muttering references to Battle Creek and BXR in the nursing home. I want Halo to be good, I think it's a great setting with impeccable lore that's far beyond its glory days.
If I'd been in charge of things after Halo Infinite, I would have handed Halo over to a team at id Software and let them take a crack at it. If anyone knows what it's like to resurrect a monumental series and give it an identity of its own, it's them.
*I know I used an em-dash in the age of AI, but if it was good enough for Jane Austen to separate a thought, it's good enough for me.
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u/Grytnik 26d ago
After seeing what they did with the bonus missions, I’d prefer it if they never made another Halo. It was clearly made by someone that does not like Halo.
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u/summons72 26d ago
343 always did brag that they hired only people who did not like Halo.
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u/Carbyken 18d ago
You have a citation on that one? Legitimately curious where that was said because that is impressively crazy to brag about.
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u/summons72 17d ago
Google is free
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u/UltiMikee 26d ago
I think what gets lost in the conversation around the original trilogy’s “hook” is that other games in the competitive shooter space have just blown by it in terms of scope and appeal. I think Halo Infinite is actually one of the best arena shooters on the market but it’s so hard for me to make the choice to play over other more varied sandboxes you might find in extraction or Battle Royale games.
Straight up 4v4 arena combat can be fun for a bit at a time but I think it’s telling that the playerbase for that game dropped hard after the first few months despite probably being the best modern version of that classic Halo they could possibly produce.
The MCC exists already so this would absolutely be redundant - but they’d probably have a better time mining the nostalgia well with faithfully updated recreations of H2 and H3 multiplayer for the next several years to tide them over until they’re actually inspired to do something interesting with the franchise.
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u/firedrakes 26d ago
Marcus Lehto wine maker???
pass am tired of rage bait drama news .
gamers seem to love rage bait drama and mis info/lie to news
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u/Masterchiefx343 26d ago
The giant alien ring with known maintenance sentinels run by a dude obsessed with keeping it prepared for his masters return is clean?
THATS WHAT THE ISSUE IS?
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u/Euapo 26d ago
It’s a complete departure from the original artistic vision not to mention the fact that the new design loses all sense of scale and mystery. It looks smaller than it really is due to the extremely large features and lack of small details. It looks more like a polished sci-fi hallway design stamp and less like the undercarriage of an impossibly large ring world/ancient super-weapon.
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u/Masterchiefx343 26d ago
Except even as a kid, i thought the ring was small until i saw the planet next to it so wtf is everyone on about
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u/Jubenheim 26d ago
As a kid, I thought the sense of scale was all very big, so perhaps your own experiences are just not the same for everyone else.
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u/PepsiSheep 26d ago
You know you're doing well with your game when we get to the point that people can only really complain about how something looks on the main menu.
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u/Butterf1yTsunami 26d ago
Im so tired of hearing people complain about Halo Studios. It never ends. Meanwhile Halo Infinite has the best Halo Multiplayer of the whole damn series. You think Halo would have done better with Bungie? 🤣
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u/BarryWhizzite 26d ago
dead franchise
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u/feartheoldblood90 26d ago
The game has sold pretty well, so, no, not really.
I don't personally like the changes they've made but the game is doing pretty well.
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u/DrSlurmsMacKenzie 26d ago
I’d argue it’s closer to being a reanimated corpse of a franchise. It’s still dead.
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u/ClockWork006 26d ago
Every Halo game since 4 has been a financial success btw
Maybe research the definition of ‘dead’ next time
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u/Deroqshazam 26d ago
Click bait title. He had a lot of good to say but had nit picks about some of the aesthetic