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Why Halo Struggles to Evolve
- Thread starter Cranster
- Start date
We have seen two trailer of Infinite, and every trailer heavily evokes Halo 1-3. The first trailer heavily evokes Combat Evolved, and there's been multiple Halo 3 music pieces used. They have also said that Halo Infinite will be a spiritual reboot of the series. Everything is pointing to a return to form. If they market the game like that and then turn around and go the complete opposite of what they've been saying and showing then idk how the fan base will react.
lol because none of those are accurate? let alone tell the whole story. Halo 5 is easily the worst playing halo game ever with bad shooting, unfun movement and just a bad game in general. Reach's shooting is some of the best of the whole series.
The armor abilities changed the game in reach but they weren't bad, they were easy to deal with.
It's hard to believe anything 343 does until it's out because of how the last two games they made turned out.
I really don't think this will be the case given what Stinkles said:
Obviously they could mean story elements only, but I don't think so. Initially they said Halo Infinite would build off of 5, but that was quite a while ago and they haven't reiterated
Bloom causing spamming to win is 100% true which is why 343 patched it out and why Reach will be TU settings in the update. Some of the best shooting in the whole series lol yeah OK.
5 > Reach >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 4
is the correct order
I would have put more > but I don't have all day
Make no mistake, the decline of the franchise began with Reach. Halo 4 simply exacerbated the problem by doubling down on armor abilities and adding loadouts.
And yet the games I mentioned have either:
A. A huge fan base that doesn't waiver (all of the above games have made changes over the years that have been built on top of the great foundations they started with)
B. Esports that people actually care about (counter strike, smash, etc).
C. Make waves in the gaming and casual sphere with each release. I mean aren't people still talking about Pokémon despite it not evolving tons on the core gameplay since the 90's? Do you see how many topics here are about Pokémon on any given day?
Now about those ABCs. How much of that does Halo hit anymore?
Another thing you bring up is gameplay being dated, and I ask, how is it dated? Because it isn't a different FPS? Counter strike doesn't even have ADS and it pushes higher daily player counts and continues to sell many years after the fact with a healthy community.
What about something like Crash which's gameplay could easily be argued is more 'dated' than Halo 2 or 3. And yet it pushed higher numbers than 4 or 5 and continues to sell.
The idea that going back to _what made people like it in the first place_ will somehow make the game less popular is sort of baffling to me.
I know you want a reboot, and to be honest I don't think there is anyone left anywhere that understood what made Halo good, so who knows a reboot will probably be a better bet than whatever flavor of the week 343i does to the gameplay next. Hearing the terms open world and RPG elements sort of has me tuning it out though.
You might wanna check on that.
Even with its flaws, Reach had close to 1 mill unique players one year after release. Which makes it second to H3. Where as H4 had 20k or so. You do the math.
What I mean is, it was Bungie and not 343 that opened the can of worms that were armor abilities.
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I would not make that comparison as Solo's lack of success had nothing to do with TLJ other than it was released to close to it. The Halo franchise was never killed aswell because both Halo 4 and 5 sold as well as the other mainline series titles.
Solo's lack of success was because of TLJ's reception it received. TLJ would've always done well regardless of how good/bad the movie was. This is similar to Reach. Reach was always gonna do well cause of Halo 3. You see the results after that which was Halo 4. Halo 4 was awful too which didn't help but even if Halo 4 was amazing and the greatest Halo ever we would have seen a regression in sales.
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TLJ had an overwhelmingly positive reception outside of alt right hot takes and it was a financial success. Solo had poor marketing, had very well known production issues, was a film nobody really wanted, and was released months after TLJ. I'm gonna stop here though as this is venturing off topic.
While Halo 4 may have effected Halo 5's sales negatively, I think the Xbox One reveal and the MCC debacle did more harm than anything. A massive franchise like Halo though is always going to see sales drop off with some entries over time though.
What the fuck are you smoking. I can easly get the problems with the campaign narrative (it was quite bad), shitty AI teammates, lootboxes. But Halo 5 is probably most fun I've got in a multiplayer Halo game thanks to it's controls
The infamous Halo 4 population chart only counted players that were in a War Games match. Campaign, custom games, forge, theater, Spartan Ops, and anyone in the menu not actively playing were not counted. 343 never had a 24H unique users counter like Bungie did.
The Reach pop counter counted everything. We don't know Halo 4's UU per day stats, and the Halo 4 War Games pop counter was probably just half of even less of the total population in at that time, if the Reach split between multiplayer and the rest of the game was similar between both game (anywhere from 40-50% for multiplayer from what I remember.
There is still a clear trend down from 3 to Reach to 4, but it wasn't actually so drastic between Reach and 4.
Halo Reach multiplayer at launch was bad but at least the TU to 85%? bloom and ZBNS made the game a good online halo experience. Halo 4 never got much better.
And the firefight was at least decent and the campaign was great. The forge world was also awesome.
Halo 4s only saving grace is it's campaign which was good but had very little replayabilty.
I'm probably a little biased because of how much hype I had for Halo 4, but I don't remember much fondness towards Halo 4.
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Legendary slayer (equal starts) for Halo 4 is good. Especially with some of the DLC maps.
Halo 4 started off strong, but within a few months plunged to lower than Reach had been prior to Halo 4's launch. I do agree that Halo 4's sales would have been higher if Reach had been even more popular, but the game pretty clearly lost people's attention on its own merits:
Both got a little better a year after launch but were still awful. Only zbns Reach was playable.
why cant you all be the fanboy i am and love *all halos for what they offer
*halo 4 had a lot of bullshit
*halo 4 had a lot of bullshit
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343 shouldn't try to make a Halo for casual fans. They will leave once the next big AAA shooter comes along. Instead make a game that will serve the core audience and grow it from there.
This idea that Halo needs to drastically change because it needs to keep the casual crowd at all costs is ridiculous. Look at R6 Siege on Xbox. It gets more players than Blops 4. That is a great example of a developer serving their core playerbase and growing naturally from there.
This idea that Halo needs to drastically change because it needs to keep the casual crowd at all costs is ridiculous. Look at R6 Siege on Xbox. It gets more players than Blops 4. That is a great example of a developer serving their core playerbase and growing naturally from there.
If they want to evolve Halo, they need to go back to the core gameplay and scale up. Make the battles bigger and more advanced. The problem is that they lost the thread around Reach.
Evolving a series is about refining and building on top of what you have. People have pointed out numerous examples of franchises that do that very well. Halo 1-3 is actually a good example of what evolution looks like.
Despite Halo 3 being 12 years old at this point, I can't say that Halo 5 is really that much of an advancement. The technical aspects besides the graphics haven't really moved forward. Maybe that's due to the CPU bottleneck of the Xbox One, but it's really disappointing thinking of how open and complex they could make the sandbox.
Evolving a series is about refining and building on top of what you have. People have pointed out numerous examples of franchises that do that very well. Halo 1-3 is actually a good example of what evolution looks like.
Despite Halo 3 being 12 years old at this point, I can't say that Halo 5 is really that much of an advancement. The technical aspects besides the graphics haven't really moved forward. Maybe that's due to the CPU bottleneck of the Xbox One, but it's really disappointing thinking of how open and complex they could make the sandbox.
I beat Halo 4 on legendary solo, I kind of dig it's campaign but you are absolutely right it had some BS.
i was referring mainly to its MP. i too like its campaign for the most part and accepting its flaws.
Growing up during the PS2 console wars, its crazy how big Nintendo still is while Halo and Microsoft first parties are former shadows of themselves.
I guess Nintendo still wins in their mascot characters but I miss those rivalries.
I guess Nintendo still wins in their mascot characters but I miss those rivalries.
Okay. I really need to get involved in this thread sometime soon. But the short version is: Reach was Bungie's best-playing Halo game overall, but Halo 2 Anniversary multiplayer is near-perfect, and 343i really should have remade all of Halo 2's maps in that style for the MCC.
Sometimes player models also give audio clues when receiving damage.
It puts a smile on my face that the one thing Halo fans seem to agree on is how garbage Reach's base map selection. Halo 4 MP had a ton of problems, but its vanilla map offerings were eons ahead of Reach, even its worst maps.
the people who hate Reach all seem to complain about the same things. How the armor abilities changes the meta for Multiplayer games. That's it. It's like they didn't notice the amazing campaign, and get stuck on the new things they tried to do in Reach.
I'm pretty sure Halo 4 sucked from top to bottom, with a shitty campaign and a just servicable MP.
I'm pretty sure Halo 4 sucked from top to bottom, with a shitty campaign and a just servicable MP.
They were supposed to follow up with decent map packs. Instead we got a bunch of Forged shit. But the game itself was great.
Reach is the best Halo game and 5 is such a huge departure from the Halo formula that I don't even wanna consider it a Halo game.
Not discounting this Youtubers criticism as I'm sure they have their place, but he clearly has an axe to grind. As a general rule, I like to check into what a channel uploads as regular content and this whole channel seem to have started on why Halo is dead and then every other video is how 343i is this and that. Like 90% of the videos are negative about X Y or Z and that's all well and good it just makes me question how much of this is based on some sort of personal vendetta.
Which seems to be very commonplace in the Halo community. I stand by the subjective opinion that every single Halo game has been pretty different from each other with different Metas and how it feels to move, shoot and even the impact of each gun of the same type from different games. This is why you get hardcore only Halo 1 is good, only Halo 2 is, etc. Like even COD IMO is more consistent in how the gunplay feels between games even if they include some different mechanics in each game.
It's a hard problem to solve and not even Bungie had a good way to solve it post its peak with Halo 3. I wish Halo MCC had not had all the issues at launch because it would have shown how much of an audience the classic games would have had. I really like how H2A feels in its MP for example but I have no idea what the general audience thinks.
For the record, I like Halo 5s MP and it was the easiest to engage with outside of Halo 2 (and H2A imo).
Which seems to be very commonplace in the Halo community. I stand by the subjective opinion that every single Halo game has been pretty different from each other with different Metas and how it feels to move, shoot and even the impact of each gun of the same type from different games. This is why you get hardcore only Halo 1 is good, only Halo 2 is, etc. Like even COD IMO is more consistent in how the gunplay feels between games even if they include some different mechanics in each game.
It's a hard problem to solve and not even Bungie had a good way to solve it post its peak with Halo 3. I wish Halo MCC had not had all the issues at launch because it would have shown how much of an audience the classic games would have had. I really like how H2A feels in its MP for example but I have no idea what the general audience thinks.
For the record, I like Halo 5s MP and it was the easiest to engage with outside of Halo 2 (and H2A imo).
As I've said previously, that's why I'm glad we're getting the dlc maps at launch, since it (hopefully) means less Forged stuff (and hopefully no The Cage, even if there's no other Lockout-style map in Reach like Haven in Halo 4).
Do you mean MP? Because that's mainly what the OP and talking about and as for Reach MP being the best... it really wasn't.
I mean i would agree and disagree with this. I would argue there is definitely a certain "feel" to the game-play that Halo 1,2, and 3 share, but not the others. Sure the guns, movement, meta etc always changed between each game but Reach on-wards i felt like Bungee (and later 343) started venturing too far with changes/experimentation to the point that it almost didn't feel like Halo anymore. I know at least this was the reason my friends and i dropped Halo after Reach.
Its subjective to some degree and hard to explain but to me Halo 2 to Halo 3 felt really different, the movement, gun handling, the added equipment it felt really different. Did you try H2A or H5? they are much closer in "feel" other than H5s spartan abilities. I still think that H2A is the best vanilla halo MP in a modern graphics engine.
I said "amazing" and that it's still a great game. But to answer your question: hardware/software capabilities and innovations, and everything else that goes along with more investment over time in a new technology/medium. Was pong "good for its time?". Yes, yes it was. But its pretty lame now. Sometimes things change. Halo is still great, but it's silly to say that many aspects of it haven't been overshadowed time and time again. Part of the reason it was so good was because it was innovative. All those games you've mentioned are classics, but that doesn't mean that time doesn't expose their drawbacks.
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I'll be honest I'm not sure what purists want anymore out of an "evolved" Halo. Halo 5 felt like a logical progression of the gameplay, after the fumblings of Reach and 4. Spartans being spartans.
I'll be even more honest and say it kinda surprises me that so many people even want to go back to Halo 3-style gameplay. Every time I play 3 nowadays, much as I still love the game, I feel so dang slow. It's like molasses. Damn, can I get a sprint button please?
I'll be even more honest and say it kinda surprises me that so many people even want to go back to Halo 3-style gameplay. Every time I play 3 nowadays, much as I still love the game, I feel so dang slow. It's like molasses. Damn, can I get a sprint button please?
I think Halo's biggest problem going forward is that 343i seem to want to make it all things to all people and so end up spreading themselves very thin.
Halo 5 comprises a single player campaign, the core arena modes, big team battle, breakout, warzone, firefight and forge. Of these, only one satisfied me to any extent in Halo 5 (arena) and that was substantially let down by the lack of maps, and narrow focus which ignores the infantry/vehicle mixup which makes Halo Halo. The other areas are just kinda bad.
Warzone lacked content and was designed to make money first and foremost.
Big Team Battle lacked content and had some of the worst maps I've ever seen in Halo.
Breakout just feels really off due to it having very slightly different mechanics to standard Halo.
Forge at this point as a concept does as much harm as good because 343i insist on putting forge maps into the other modes despite them looking and playing poorly.
Never actually tried the single player and never heard anything that made me want to.
Firefight was, naturally, infested with the same issues as Warzone.
343i need to realise that it's better to do one thing really well than lots of things moderately well. Get one thing right and build from there.
Halo 5 comprises a single player campaign, the core arena modes, big team battle, breakout, warzone, firefight and forge. Of these, only one satisfied me to any extent in Halo 5 (arena) and that was substantially let down by the lack of maps, and narrow focus which ignores the infantry/vehicle mixup which makes Halo Halo. The other areas are just kinda bad.
Warzone lacked content and was designed to make money first and foremost.
Big Team Battle lacked content and had some of the worst maps I've ever seen in Halo.
Breakout just feels really off due to it having very slightly different mechanics to standard Halo.
Forge at this point as a concept does as much harm as good because 343i insist on putting forge maps into the other modes despite them looking and playing poorly.
Never actually tried the single player and never heard anything that made me want to.
Firefight was, naturally, infested with the same issues as Warzone.
343i need to realise that it's better to do one thing really well than lots of things moderately well. Get one thing right and build from there.
Long before issues were known what I realized is that a lot of my more casual Halo friends didn't really care. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure there would be a sizeable crowd playing (as it is right now) but imo it wouldn't come close to the engagement of the past.
The funny thing is that it's especially the Xbox community that seemed to have become tired and saturated with their own poster boy. It seems to me as if the PC crowd is 2x as energized with MCC.
Imo 343i did the only right thing with Infinite: Take your time, make a really quality product.
Good video. I've been saying this for years. Halo is elegant simplicity. It is a tank doing a ballet and being able to have full access to movement options and combat options at the same time is integral to how it plays. Halo 1-3 had a ton of innovation but the core gameplay loop felt cohesive the whole way through. People often cite lack of sprint making Halo tough for newcomers etc-I would counter with Doom 2016 not having sprint and being incredibly well received. Halo's simple gameplay: movement, jump, crouch, shoot, melee, grenade can all be pulled off simultaneously as soon as the player learns what buttons do what on the controller they are ready to play. It is infinitely accessible. Anyone can play Halo. I dare even say people can play it competently. Taking these mechanics-shoot, jump, melee, etc-and mastering them is what makes someone play Halo well.
Also to the video's point-Halo can evolve and should evolve in a way that doesn't change the core gameplay. We actually see this a lot in Halo 1-3. Just off the top of my head:
Halo 2: new weapons including the sword which functions entirely different from the rest of the sandbox, new game modes, dual wielding, destructible and interactive environments/fusion coils that explode, switches on maps that open up new routes, destructible vehicles, gravity lifts, conveyer belts, tracking rocket functionality, flying vehicles
Halo 3: equipment (bubble shield, mine, power drain), forge, theater, additional game modes including zombies, even more new weapons, man canons, additional grenades,
There was a ton of new stuff to take in with both Halo 2 and 3. The gameplay had some variation between each game that upset people but by and large it was consistent. Move to Reach/4/5 and things change dramatically. There is no doubt that Halo 1-3 feel infinitely more cohesive than 4/5. It is really frustrating as a Halo fan. I know there are fans of the newer games but I would dare argue that the older fans are more likely to stick with the game and form a lasting community-see the player population charts. Halo died when it lost its identity, the simplicity that it once had.
Jumping into Halo 4 and Halo 5's massive gameplay changes coupled with the art and music changing and the game seems even more foreign to long time fans. Halo 4 and 5 become a game with elements of Halo in it rather than a Halo game with new innovations attached to it. Simply put, Halo's gameplay was the delivery vehicle for innovation in the series-innovation happened around not in the gameplay loop. In Halo 4/5 a Halo-esque environment became the delivery vehicle for a strange gameplay loop that was somewhat reminiscent of Halo.
And this is largely without even beginning to touch on the story. That is a different topic entirely but suffice to say the story consistencies that Bungie had in the original trilogy are not wholly present in 4/5.
Also to the video's point-Halo can evolve and should evolve in a way that doesn't change the core gameplay. We actually see this a lot in Halo 1-3. Just off the top of my head:
Halo 2: new weapons including the sword which functions entirely different from the rest of the sandbox, new game modes, dual wielding, destructible and interactive environments/fusion coils that explode, switches on maps that open up new routes, destructible vehicles, gravity lifts, conveyer belts, tracking rocket functionality, flying vehicles
Halo 3: equipment (bubble shield, mine, power drain), forge, theater, additional game modes including zombies, even more new weapons, man canons, additional grenades,
There was a ton of new stuff to take in with both Halo 2 and 3. The gameplay had some variation between each game that upset people but by and large it was consistent. Move to Reach/4/5 and things change dramatically. There is no doubt that Halo 1-3 feel infinitely more cohesive than 4/5. It is really frustrating as a Halo fan. I know there are fans of the newer games but I would dare argue that the older fans are more likely to stick with the game and form a lasting community-see the player population charts. Halo died when it lost its identity, the simplicity that it once had.
Jumping into Halo 4 and Halo 5's massive gameplay changes coupled with the art and music changing and the game seems even more foreign to long time fans. Halo 4 and 5 become a game with elements of Halo in it rather than a Halo game with new innovations attached to it. Simply put, Halo's gameplay was the delivery vehicle for innovation in the series-innovation happened around not in the gameplay loop. In Halo 4/5 a Halo-esque environment became the delivery vehicle for a strange gameplay loop that was somewhat reminiscent of Halo.
And this is largely without even beginning to touch on the story. That is a different topic entirely but suffice to say the story consistencies that Bungie had in the original trilogy are not wholly present in 4/5.