Halo had great features, a great menu, great gameplay, and great music.
343 has continually paired down on Halo’s greatness.
Music great? Don’t rehire the composer of the greatest video game music of all time.
Menu system great? Change it to something incomplete and unable to properly reflect the actual state of the game or its lobbies.
I am seriously concerned that if 343 cannot get these technically simple things correct that they will never be able to do the hard things.
Are you talking about Marty with that music statement? He never worked for 343, he was Bungie staff until he had a falling out with them and Activision before moving on to make his own studio.
And 343 hasn’t hired Marty back. They’ve had every opportunity to bring back an instrumental piece of Halo and they’ve sat on their hands. You can blame Microsoft (maybe) for this, but I don’t separate 343 and Microsoft.
I’ll edit my post to reflect that they didn’t fire him.
I think Marty actually came out at some point and just said he wanted to work on something new which is why we haven’t seen him come back to Halo. It’s as much his decision as it would be 343 and Microsoft’s.
I mean according to the last interviews I heard his position in the last few years as been he wants to help however he can, but 343/Microsoft won’t let anyone reach out to him formally.
Moreover Microsoft refuses to give him credit for song writing / composition on themes he worked on. For instance he isn’t credited on the latest Halo soundtrack despite the compositional themes being quite clearly his. This isn’t done anywhere else, anyone who samples or reimagines another’s musical work credits the original artist.