I read it a while back, and it was astonishing to me. If you want to get a glimpse at what was going on inside 343 and why they made some of the decisions they made, go ahead and read it.
When you’re developing a sequel to one of the most well-loved game franchises in history, you don’t hire people that hate it. You hire people that love it with a passion.
There’s a difference between loving a game, and wanting to make it better, and liking a game but not really liking it’s core features. It sounds a lot like 343 hired the kind of people who liked Halo, but really preferred other shooters over Halo’s “traditional gameplay”.
I mean, just read this part of the article. This was pretty damning to me.
> “It’s during that time you’re questioning yourself: 'How is this going to work, will it be as I envision it in my head?” says Holmes. For Halo 4, he says there were a few epiphany moments that helped boost the morale of the team. One of the earlier ones that Holmes recalls was when the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a “very traditional” Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about.
> 343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional. But that first build showed the new team that this amalgamation of different studio cultures could work together and achieve a common goal.
I mean, are you kidding me?
And this was the guy they hired for creative director?
If Halo 5 is to be a success, 343 can NOT have this approach to making a Halo game. Better yet, they need to get rid of these people who don’t really like “traditional Halo”, and want to change it into something different.
> I’m referring to this article right here.
>
> I read it a while back, and it was astonishing to me. If you want to get a glimpse at what was going on inside 343 and why they made some of the decisions they made, go ahead and read it.
>
> When you’re developing a sequel to one of the most well-loved game franchises in history, you don’t hire people that hate it. You hire people that love it with a passion.
>
> There’s a difference between loving a game, and wanting to make it better, and liking a game but not really liking it’s core features. It sounds a lot like 343 hired the kind of people who liked Halo, but really preferred other shooters over Halo’s “traditional gameplay”.
>
> I mean, just read this part of the article. This was pretty damning to me.
>
>
>
> > “It’s during that time you’re questioning yourself: 'How is this going to work, will it be as I envision it in my head?” says Holmes. For Halo 4, he says there were a few epiphany moments that helped boost the morale of the team. One of the earlier ones that Holmes recalls was when the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a “very traditional” Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about.
> > 343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional. But that first build showed the new team that this amalgamation of different studio cultures could work together and achieve a common goal.
>
> I mean, are you kidding me?
>
> And this was the guy they hired for creative director?
>
> If Halo 5 is to be a success, 343 can NOT have this approach to making a Halo game. Better yet, they need to get rid of these people who don’t really like “traditional Halo”, and want to change it into something different.
I agree with ya OP, but as Spartan said the best they can do now is appeal to both sides equally.
> I’m just saying “too traditional” may of just been a Halo 3 clone so they wanted to do something new, you must looks at both ends of the spectrum
>
> Maybe in this they can put in Classic and Infinity gametypes, at this point it’s best to appeal to both sides, Legendary and Pro prove they can
>
> Also without Holmes we wouldn’t have, what I consider to be the most important aspect of Halo 4, the Chief/Cortana relationship
They wouldn’t HAVE to appeal to both sides. “Infinity Halo” is only a thing now because they ignored what people wanted and decided to make their own version of Halo.
I understand that they wanted to make Halo “their own”.
But they were handed this franchise on a silver platter, and they should have listened to what fans wanted. They made a prototype, people liked it, and they scrapped it for no other reason than “it was traditional”. That’s just change for the sake of change.
I’m sure there are a multitude of similar threads in the Halo 4 forum covering the same topic, on the same article. Except they’re months old by now.
Why bring it up again when it was already so hotly debated and discussed ages ago?
That said they have a larger and much more expanded team working on Halo 5. More resources to devote to making it excellent than they did with Halo 4, and also a brand new console with brand new fancy pants hardware.
> I’m sure there are a multitude of similar threads in the Halo 4 forum covering the same topic, on the same article. Except they’re months old by now.
>
> Why bring it up again when it was already so hotly debated and discussed ages ago?
>
> That said they have a larger and much more expanded team working on Halo 5. More resources to devote to making it excellent than they did with Halo 4, and also a brand new console with brand new fancy pants hardware.
If this was already discussed to death several months ago, then I’m sorry for beating a dead horse. Sometimes I don’t visit these forums for long stretches of time, so I probably missed that.
My point is, don’t do the same thing for Halo 5.
Also, a bigger team with more resources and better tech is not a guarantee that Halo 5 will be a good game. I don’t know why everyone is convinced that somehow this will magically save Halo. What Halo needs is a better direction, and a better vision. Numbers and tech won’t necessarily help that.
> > I’m sure there are a multitude of similar threads in the Halo 4 forum covering the same topic, on the same article. Except they’re months old by now.
> >
> > Why bring it up again when it was already so hotly debated and discussed ages ago?
> >
> > That said they have a larger and much more expanded team working on Halo 5. More resources to devote to making it excellent than they did with Halo 4, and also a brand new console with brand new fancy pants hardware.
>
> If this was already discussed to death several months ago, then I’m sorry for beating a dead horse. Sometimes I don’t visit these forums for long stretches of time, so I probably missed that.
>
> My point is, don’t do the same thing for Halo 5.
>
> Also, a bigger team with more resources and better tech is not a guarantee that Halo 5 will be a good game. I don’t know why everyone is convinced that somehow this will magically save Halo. What Halo needs is a better direction, and a better vision. Numbers and tech won’t necessarily help that.
About time that somebody understands this. Quantity =/= quality. Just look at Halo 1. It was built by a rather small team, but turned out to be a huge hit and one of the best games of our generation, and still feels amazing to play to this day. And then Halo 2, which was built by a slightly bigger team, but was almost completely scratched and rebuilt in a matter of months prior to release. Even then, it turned out to be an amazing game (although the multiplayer did need some pretty big fixes). The reason the two games turned out so great was because all of Bungie had a unified vision, which is far easier by being a small team.
Sure, 343i may have the manpower to create a game, but with over 300 employees, can you really have a unified vision? Can you really have efficient communication? The more people you have working, the bigger the odds that somebody will come in and ruin something. For example, we have Halo Reach, which was built by the biggest team Bungie had ever had at the time. But it was also a very criticized game. Even a team with experience can mess things up.
However, Halo 4 has improved exponentially since its released, and 343i have admitted on several occasions that they messed up. I still have hope that Halo 5 will turn out to be a great improvement over Halo 4, but I’m going to stay somewhat skeptical.
> “We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of ‘X,’” says O’Connor. "But what that really meant was, ‘I feel like this game could be awesome because of ‘Y input’ that I’m going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I’m passionate about proving it.’ So we ended up with a bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team."
Emphasis on the bolded section.
> mean, just read this part of the article. This was pretty damning to me.
>
> “It’s during that time you’re questioning yourself: 'How is this going to work, will it be as I envision it in my head?” says Holmes. For Halo 4, he says there were a few epiphany moments that helped boost the morale of the team. One of the earlier ones that Holmes recalls was when the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a “very traditional” Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about.
>
> 343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional. But that first build showed the new team that this amalgamation of different studio cultures could work together and achieve a common goal.
> I mean, are you kidding me?
>
> And this was the guy they hired for creative director?
>
> If Halo 5 is to be a success, 343 can NOT have this approach to making a Halo game. Better yet, they need to get rid of these people who don’t really like “traditional Halo”, and want to change it into something different.
I almost want 343 to make H5 an extremely traditional Halo game.
Just so we can end this argument once and for all.
Course, my fear is that the franchise would be dead at that point…
People in decision making positions are better served when they are not surrounded by “yes men” but surrounded with people who have contrasting viewpoints so that the decision makers can have a well rounded idea instead of a one sided argument.
> I’m just saying “too traditional” may of just been a Halo 3 clone so they wanted to do something new, you must looks at both ends of the spectrum
>
> Maybe in this they can put in Classic and Infinity gametypes, at this point it’s best to appeal to both sides, Legendary and Pro prove they can
>
> <mark>Also without Holmes we wouldn’t have, what I consider to be the most important aspect of Halo 4, the Chief/Cortana relationship</mark>
Not to diminish Mr Holmes work on the game or anything, but we already knew AI’s think themselves to death after 7 years so chances are we’d experience a story like this without his input anyway. :I
> At least now they know that when you stray away from “traditional” Halo, your population dies out after 4-5 months.
And there’s no saying that “traditional” Halo would have done any better (because you haven’t accounted for changing tastes and interests in Halo generally) but you can say that it probably would have done worse. Halo 3’s pop is in a far more depressing state despite fully representing that ideal of “MORE OF THE SAME” that you seem to want so desperately out of new products. Plus you have the fact that no Halo clone on the market is mopping up all that untapped demand for “tradition” that 343 supposedly didn’t fill with Halo 4.
What you simply have is change, change in gameplay and change in the population and they certainly don’t have to be related.
> And there’s no saying that “traditional” Halo would have done any better (because you haven’t accounted for changing tastes and interests in Halo generally) but you can say that it probably would have done worse.
I have no idea how you’re making that assumption.
Releasing a traditional Halo game would have done worse than Halo 4? A game that lost 90% of its population in 8 months?
Not to mention that Halo fanbase has been clamoring for a return to classic Halo since it’s release?
> Halo 3’s pop is in a far more depressing state despite fully representing that ideal of “MORE OF THE SAME” that you seem to want so desperately out of new products. Plus you have the fact that no Halo clone on the market is mopping up all that untapped demand for “tradition” that 343 supposedly didn’t fill with Halo 4.
>
> What you simply have is change, change in gameplay and change in the population and they certainly don’t have to be related.
Really?
You’re seriously claiming that traditional Halo would not work because Halo 3, a game released in 2007, has a terrible population now?
Halo 3 was alive and strong more than a year after release. Where is Halo 4 after 8 months?
And there is no Halo clone on the market. They’re all COD clones now.
> No one they hired hated Halo, they only hated certain aspects of Halo.
Sure. Apparently they only hated the fundamental aspects of how the game worked.