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Halo Infinite Creative Director Leaves Company [Update: Lead Producer on Campaign leaves as well]
- Thread starter Strakt
- Start date
I'm not trolling.
I'm just thinking this either means it's going to be delayed , rushed or potentially episodic.
I'm just hoping it doesn't mean the release will be sub par
Thanks man, much appreciated!
My only hope is that infinite campaign will bring back the Halo magic and feeling found in the past games. That's my only hope.
No worries.
I think you misread something. A couple people at Midwinter were previously at 343i, like Josh Holmes. He left 343i in 2016 and founded Midwinter.
Midwinter, the company, didn't actually work on Halo 4 nor 5.
Of course there will be some creative differences on any large project with history and there will be people who make career decisions that they see as best for them in a very large organization.
I talked to Frank O'Connor (a.k.a. Stinkles) at Halo Outpost at the end of July. I have every confidence that Halo Infinite will be amazing. I told him that the two pinnacle gaming moments for me were playing Super Mario 64 on a Nintendo 64 for the first time and then playing the first Halo on the original Xbox, as both were times where I was basically amazed at what video games can be. I asked him if Halo Infinite could give me that type of feeling. He said that obviously he can't promise how I will feel, but that the team's vision is the "spiritual reboot" of the series that has been mentioned publicly. He said that they want you to feel like you did again when starting the second campaign level on the original Halo after crashing in the Bumblebee and emerging into the open world for the first time, and he also mentioned the 1999 Macworld Halo prototype demo where people were asking whether it was real that you would be able to do all of the things such as driving a Warthog in a big open world.
Oh, and that vision of the spiritual reboot is being led by Chris Lee who is the overall creative lead for Halo Infinite.
I talked to Frank O'Connor (a.k.a. Stinkles) at Halo Outpost at the end of July. I have every confidence that Halo Infinite will be amazing. I told him that the two pinnacle gaming moments for me were playing Super Mario 64 on a Nintendo 64 for the first time and then playing the first Halo on the original Xbox, as both were times where I was basically amazed at what video games can be. I asked him if Halo Infinite could give me that type of feeling. He said that obviously he can't promise how I will feel, but that the team's vision is the "spiritual reboot" of the series that has been mentioned publicly. He said that they want you to feel like you did again when starting the second campaign level on the original Halo after crashing in the Bumblebee and emerging into the open world for the first time, and he also mentioned the 1999 Macworld Halo prototype demo where people were asking whether it was real that you would be able to do all of the things such as driving a Warthog in a big open world.
Oh, and that vision of the spiritual reboot is being led by Chris Lee who is the overall creative lead for Halo Infinite.
Episodic in the way a Destiny has seasons, I have no doubt. I think it'll ship with a complete campaign but that there will be ongoing content throughout. They intend Halo to be a lengthy "platform" that keeps on giving and has users keep subscribing.
I have nothing negative to say about those two trailers. I'm quite intrigued by what they teased. Just saying I also haven't seen enough to say I know this is a project that is going to turn out great. The departure of these leads on the project is a worrying sign IMO.
EtcERA political threads were all the evidence I needed of this theory 😏
Oh I'm legit impressed now, if that is true, it really doesn't look like a game engine, not a polygon in sight, soft shadows everywhere, good facial expressions, etc.
Maybe take a step back and realize you're actually using metacritic as an argument for a games quality. We aren't on GameFAQs.
People disliking Halo 5 isn't some niche opinion.
This along with the drop in glassdoor ratings makes me think I did the right thing in choosing not to apply to work on Infinite. Which is to bad, I'd love to work on a game in an official capacity, but I'm not quite ready to move across the country just yet.
To whom it may concern:
I'm concerned that people don't understand just how concerned I am concerning this matter
I'm concerned that people don't understand just how concerned I am concerning this matter
I'm sure it will be fine
Kinda get what Matt are saying. There's a lot of examples of games being quite chaotic in development, but managing to find some momentum in the last year / 5 months of development and came out with something great.
Not the best way in the long run of course, but then again that depends if they depend on those moments of magic or make some serious changes to ensure it happens less or never again.
Not the best way in the long run of course, but then again that depends if they depend on those moments of magic or make some serious changes to ensure it happens less or never again.
I'm only semi-joking when I say I wish 343 could pull Rod Ferguson down to the studio for the next year and have him shepard this baby across the finish line like he did for Bioshock Infinite.
After what he's done to Gears? NO THANKS.
Guy is talented, but all the bullshit they infused into that last 2 gears, specifically gears 5 has literally alienated all my friends who love gears. It just doesn't feel like gears anymore. it's trying to hard to be a little more broader.
And in doing so loses some of it's identity.
Like I can't believe after all the hype it still is below a 90 meta , and the pc version is a 82? SO OBVIOUSLY not everything they have done to put gears in a better place has worked.
That and the huge player drop off is not something that's encouraging.
So, she accepted a very important leadership position with an added note that she will be leaving soon? Ehhhh....
Lol. Rod is an amazing creative lead and studio head but I'm sure 343i has capable hands too.
I get that, but I totally think Gears 5 open world-ish concept would fit Halo like a glove.
It's really weirding me out to not see Gears 5 on Steam's peak game count list though. How is it trending on Windows store/Xbox?
This stuff is concerning, but I don't want to say this will be a bad game. Hopefully it still turns out to be good. As someone else said, the campaign can't be worse than 5. 5 had fantastic gameplay and mp, but the campaign was just... uninspired and kinda bad.
Do you even know what you're arguing anymore...
Nobody is saying "the storytelling was trash but gameplay is great which means it's da best game evaaaa"
I mean all we can do and should do is hope it turns out well regardless of these bid differences within the team. Honestly, I wish people could just work through differences rather than quit. You're talented enough to be given such an important position, I'd like to think you would be visionary enough to be able to flex as needed, as any leader must.
You dont know why people leave. It can be personal also.
No but the other extreme being argued is that Halo 4 and 5 are bad games like Superman 64.
I'd argue both Halo 4 and 5 are better games overall than say every Call of Duty and Destiny 1 & 2.
Heck, Halo 4 and 5 are better than Halo 3 in the gunplay department atleast.
See I enjoyed Gears 5 more than almost any game I've played this year. The story was wonderful, my only issue being the abrupt ending (which, in retrospect, would fit Halo well lol).
The player drop-off and all that happens nowadays. I'm not super concerned about it, and Microsoft and The Coalition don't seem to be panicking either.
There is quite the gap between a "good game" and "da best game evaaaa", but go on :)
I'm just speaking from my time in game dev (since '95), maybe different for other studios. Different studios, different games, different requirements.
...as I'm sure you know.
lmao I'm illustrating a point using exaggeration.
If you still can't tell, it doesn't matter how good the gameplay is, if the storytelling is bad, then the game is simply bad. Halo is not a one trick, double-A pony. Halo has a rich universe and if you can't do those characters and world justice, then your product is subpar. There's countless examples of this everywhere, the Batman films post-Nolan, The Bourne Legacy, the new Star Wars trilogy... etc. Media that fails to meet the expectations that their predecessors put forth, the boundaries they pushed and standards they set.
I'll give you Destiny 1 &2 on the caveat we are ONLY talking about Crucible, because the base gameplay loop and gunplay in Destiny is WAY better than Halo 4's. And Halo 4 MP better than the MW trilogy and the first two Blops games?
That would be extraordinarily rare. Most games are still in extremely rough form this far out, with technology finally settling to the point where real production work goes into high gear. The story, voice acting, and motion capture can be complete early but turning the raw material into a playable campaign requires a lot of other parts to settle first.
Trying to guess what departures mean is pretty pointless. It could be bad news, or it could be exactly what the project needs to come together and move in a healthier direction. I can only hope that they're focused first and foremost on making a great game rather than hitting an arbitrary date. If the team doesn't feel they can deliver what fans are waiting for on the current timeline, they should have the freedom to delay. Microsoft doesn't exactly have a stellar track record on making that call, but hopefully they've learned their lesson.
Halo Infinite could turn out to be a great game. It doesn't mean there aren't leadership issues at 343. There is negativity from people leaving starting with the not so subtle hints from Josh Holmes when he left and did an interview talking about what a mess Halo 4 and 5 developments were. You have the Glass Door ratings. Now people making lateral moves to leave Halo Infinite in the final year of development. Sorry no way to cover that up. If it doesn't show in the final product in 2020, it will catch up to the studio long run. You can't have this much smoke without a fire somewhere.
Considering 343 is 0/2 on Halo games *in my opinion*. None of this paints a bright picture. But, we still gonna wait and see what the final product is.
I love the og trilogy and I want them to go back to that style obviously but I was very surprised at how much I liked Halo 5 mp (pre-patch). It's not perfect but I thought it was more Halo than Reach and 4, which I know are very low bars.
I still have hope that they will strip the extra mobility and bring back normal scope and there's no better time to do that than with Infinite.