Now that I’ve triggered some of you with the Title, I want you to hear me out Puts on tinfoil hat
I feel like 343 wants to make a good halo game. Their hearts are in the right place, they have the people, the budget and the means to do so. But I feel like the real evil here is not 343 as much as it is Microsoft. There is a re-occuring theme in halo 5 and it is apparent with every single update. Every single thing 343 does is looked over by Microsoft. Microsoft is their publisher, the reason that 343 even exists. If 343 were to make a fantastic halo game that has no sprint, tactical and skillful gameplay that was nothing like anything else on the market, odds are it would be shot down by big bad Microsoft. Its ironic, because microsoft must be how the company feels compared to other publishers like Activision and EA. They feel so microscopic and soft and that they feel the need to make their pride and joy like other games on the market, and is painstakingly evident. You 343 wants to make halo have an ADS like feature? No, that’s microsoft’s doing. Why was halo 4 so much like call of duty? Because thats what was popular and well liked at the time. Why is there a mode completely built on buying packs of random chance items that can be bought with real money? Because is sure makes Activision an assload of money to sell random packs, and better yet, build a while -Yoinking- gamemode about it Halo was so great because it was so different and as much as 343 wants to make a great game that caters to everything we want, Microsoft is going to force them to make similar to other first person shooters. Look at games like overwatch and Doom, released to critical acclaim on their lack of sprint, the only way we would get a sprint free halo again is if a lack of sprint became incredibly popular and microsoft wanted to copy something else. 343 takes a nasty beating about halo 5’s mistakes and bugs all while 343 pulls the strings in the backround.
Edit: while Microsoft does force halo to be mainstream, this doesn’t excuse 343 from things like Spartan charge, and game design issues.
I’m sure Microsoft demanded that 343i pander to the mainstream majority and pursue profit in any way possible.
However I doubt Microsoft specifically instructed them to change the art style, botch the music, add lime-green warthogs, add certain mechanics like Spartan Charge, and so on. In regard to things such as those, 343i is solely accountable for their actions.
Microsoft told them the general goal they had to achieve (make a “modern” and profitable game). 343i are the ones who choose how specifically they wanted to achieve that goal. You can’t pin everything on Microsoft, as much as I would love to.
As an example, does this mean Microsoft told 343 to lie or at least be misleading about Blue Team having more lines of dialogue in Halo 5 than in their past appearances in every other piece of Halo media combined? Did Microsoft make Frank O’Connor say that anybody who feels Cortana is evil must be a “young fan” who struggles with subtlety and nuance? Look, I’m sure Microsoft felt they needed to have input at any number of stages of development, but the people at 343 are more than capable of making mistakes and being shady as Microsoft is.
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> As an example, does this mean Microsoft told 343 to lie or at least be misleading about Blue Team having more lines of dialogue in Halo 5 than in their past appearances in every other piece of Halo media combined? Did Microsoft make Frank O’Connor say that anybody who feels Cortana is evil must be a “young fan” who struggles with subtlety and nuance? Look, I’m sure Microsoft felt they needed to have input at any number of stages of development, but the people at 343 are more than capable of making mistakes and being shady as Microsoft is.
You drive a good point, 343 Did make quite a few mistakes, but I’m some parts of the game, it’s somewhat apparent that they had to make a mainstream game.
its taking nearly 10 months to add Action Sack? - we still can’t get permanent play lists because of not a big enough population, even though Halo 5 has the most monthly players since Halo 3(or whatever PR spin Bravo threw at us)? - it took months to add game modes that should have been in the game or at the very least, should have been available sooner? - Warzone Firefight still has a lot of issues that were in the Beta and brought up by the community in the Feedback thread, yet still made it in the final release? - 343 rarely responds to the community, especially here on these forums, even though they tell everyone in every stream to visit these forums? - 343 lied about the length of the campaign? - Out of all the amazing forged maps made by the community, we get stuck with the bad ones? - 343 seems to have forgotten about the FUN and Social aspects of Halo?
You do not blame publisher for everything. If that is the case, developers should not be rewarded or credited when the game becomes such success, because everything was done by publisher right? When Halo game succeeds, people shall not be praising 343, they shall praise Microsoft.
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> As an example, does this mean Microsoft told 343 to lie or at least be misleading about Blue Team having more lines of dialogue in Halo 5 than in their past appearances in every other piece of Halo media combined? Did Microsoft make Frank O’Connor say that anybody who feels Cortana is evil must be a “young fan” who struggles with subtlety and nuance? Look, I’m sure Microsoft felt they needed to have input at any number of stages of development, but the people at 343 are more than capable of making mistakes and being shady as Microsoft is.
I have asked you so many time for a link to where Frank O’Connor said, but you haven’t given me one yet. Can I have a link this time?
Sadly that is speculation… what proof do you have that Microsoft made or forced those decisions? At the end of the day it’s all 343s fault really. Their name is on the game. It’s up to 343 to be on the same page as Microsoft about where the game should go… it’s 343 responsibility to be sure all departments are on the same page so advertising and build up matches the actual game. The game falls on 343 shoulders.
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> > 2533274812652989;3:
> > As an example, does this mean Microsoft told 343 to lie or at least be misleading about Blue Team having more lines of dialogue in Halo 5 than in their past appearances in every other piece of Halo media combined? Did Microsoft make Frank O’Connor say that anybody who feels Cortana is evil must be a “young fan” who struggles with subtlety and nuance? Look, I’m sure Microsoft felt they needed to have input at any number of stages of development, but the people at 343 are more than capable of making mistakes and being shady as Microsoft is.
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> I have asked you so many time for a link to where Frank O’Connor said, but you haven’t given me one yet. Can I have a link this time?
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> > 2535455681930574;10:
> > > 2533274812652989;3:
> > > As an example, does this mean Microsoft told 343 to lie or at least be misleading about Blue Team having more lines of dialogue in Halo 5 than in their past appearances in every other piece of Halo media combined? Did Microsoft make Frank O’Connor say that anybody who feels Cortana is evil must be a “young fan” who struggles with subtlety and nuance? Look, I’m sure Microsoft felt they needed to have input at any number of stages of development, but the people at 343 are more than capable of making mistakes and being shady as Microsoft is.
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> > I have asked you so many time for a link to where Frank O’Connor said, but you haven’t given me one yet. Can I have a link this time?
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> The link is in his post.
Sounds like a sort of cop-out to suggest every bad decision is because of MS and every good desicison is because of 343. There’s no basis for any of this one way or the other. Unless it’s in regards to marketing or release dates, there’s no reason to believe MS has had any notable impact on how the game was made.
I’d be willing to bet that a time-crunch placed by Microsoft forced them to change the story at the last minute. Some other things, like the garbo spawn system, are all 343, though.
And let’s not kid ourselves; the stort was definitely changed at the last minute. Based on what they were initially saying about the story, combined with the awesome concept art you see in the achievements list, there is no way that there wasn’t a dude with a fancy tie that decided to place a ton of pressure to get the story done, or to maybe just change it outright.
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> I’d be willing to bet that a time-crunch placed by Microsoft forced them to change the story at the last minute. Some other things, like the garbo spawn system, are all 343, though.
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> And let’s not kid ourselves; the stort was definitely changed at the last minute. Based on what they were initially saying about the story, combined with the awesome concept art you see in the achievements list, there is no way that there wasn’t a dude with a fancy tie that decided to place a ton of pressure to get the story done, or to maybe just change it outright.
The time crunch is likely the reason. MS wanted it to be a fall game and delaying it a year would leave them without a Halo title for that year, which they don’t want. Throw in the unexpected -Yoink- up of MCC that they tried to fix, they just didn’t have time for what they originally planned, so things had to be changed.
That’s all assuming the originally planned story wasn’t abandoned for just not coming together in terms of quality, which can also happen.
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> I’d be willing to bet that a time-crunch placed by Microsoft forced them to change the story at the last minute. Some other things, like the garbo spawn system, are all 343, though.
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> And let’s not kid ourselves; the stort was definitely changed at the last minute. Based on what they were initially saying about the story, combined with the awesome concept art you see in the achievements list, there is no way that there wasn’t a dude with a fancy tie that decided to place a ton of pressure to get the story done, or to maybe just change it outright.
Again that is just speculation. How do we know it’s wasn’t because the writer couldn’t pull off a good enough story for what they wanted to do so they had to change it last minute? Or what if their computer crashed and they lost everything so they had to throw something together quickly? Or maybe the game was made exactly as intended and the people doing the advertising didn’t understand what the plot was… it’s any ones guess really.
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> > 2533274808210415;15:
> > I’d be willing to bet that a time-crunch placed by Microsoft forced them to change the story at the last minute. Some other things, like the garbo spawn system, are all 343, though.
> >
> > And let’s not kid ourselves; the stort was definitely changed at the last minute. Based on what they were initially saying about the story, combined with the awesome concept art you see in the achievements list, there is no way that there wasn’t a dude with a fancy tie that decided to place a ton of pressure to get the story done, or to maybe just change it outright.
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> Again that is just speculation. How do we know it’s wasn’t because the writer couldn’t pull off a good enough story for what they wanted to do so they had to change it last minute? Or what if their computer crashed and they lost everything so they had to throw something together quickly? Or maybe the game was made exactly as intended and the people doing the advertising didn’t understand what the plot was… it’s any ones guess really.
I don’t think of 343 as one homogeneous hivemind like the flood. If I remember correctly, Holmes said that they had huge arguments about the inclusion of sprint, so the internal team seems to be quite diverse about their suggestions and ideas. All of them are equally capable of making good decisions and bad decisions. They wouldn’t suddenly pump out masterpiece after masterpiece if Microsoft weren’t around, it would most likely still be hit-and-miss. If anything, I don’t think it’s Microsoft that’s holding them back but some of their internal leads, that have the last word on creative dicesions…
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> I don’t think of 343 as one homogeneous hivemind like the flood. If I remember correctly, Holmes said that they had huge arguments about the inclusion of sprint, so the internal team seems to be quite diverse about their suggestions and ideas. All of them are equally capable of making good decisions and bad decisions. They wouldn’t suddenly pump out masterpiece after masterpiece if Microsoft weren’t around, it would most likely still be hit-and-miss. If anything, I don’t think it’s Microsoft that’s holding them back but some of their internal leads, that have the last word on creative dicesions…