343, why was your marketing campaign so deceptive?

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I love Halo, and consider myself more of a multiplayer guy than a campaign guy. However with Halo 5, I was beyond psyched for the campaign. It’s safe to say my excitement for the return to even-starts multiplayer was trumped by my absolutely unhealthy amount of jitteriness for the campaign. The Hunt the Truth marketing campaign got me more worked up more and more with every video that released. When the MCC came out and I first saw that cutscene where Locke was talking to the Arbiter about hunting Master Chief, dude I got hyped! I was jumping up and down and just all out freaking out. I mean Master Chief was going rouge! And some other UNSC dude was gonna hunt him down! Halo 5 was gonna be sick!

Then the Master Chief/Locke trailers came out, where one is about to die, and the other one is talking in a glasses city, and I just lost it. Is Chief gonna die? What’s this confrontation gonna be like? So many ideas were running through my head about this game. Then we had the Master Chief is dead trailer, and then the other one, where Linda and friends help him out of the rubble, and I just got so psyched about the Chief turning against the UNSC and the possibility of government corruption, and… it was just a great time to be a Halo fan.

But then the game came out. And my palms were sweating and hands were shaking as a stared at my tv, watching every single percent download, one at a time, for however many hours it took. When it had finished, I booted it up, and shed a tear of joy when I first saw the menu screen. The campaign was rumored to have 13 levels or something but that didn’t stop me. I played that thing front to back, beginning to end, start to finish, that first night.

And I could not have been more disappointed. The Hunt the Truth marketing campaign could not have more inaccurately portrayed in Halo 5’s campaign. The tension that was so apparent in the trailers was simply not there in the finished game. The story direction seems like the polar opposite than what was advertised. I understand that a lot of those trailers were to induce hype. They did. And I understand that a lot of them weren’t depicting exact in-game events. But what I do know is that those trailers were meant to be symbolic, and placeholders for what actually was going to happen in the game.

That didn’t happen though.

343, you failed me. You failed all of us fans. You failed your new fans, who you drew in with your deceptive marketing strategy. You failed your returning fans who maybe decided to come back to the franchise after being absent for a few years. But most of all, you failed the fans who have stuck with you from day one. The ones who stayed with you even after the monstrosity that was Halo 4. The ones who live on these forums trying to create something better and fix and critique Halo into the best game it can be. The ones who play when there’s no one left to play with, because despite your attempts at killing the franchise, we refuse to let Halo die.

So I ask you, 343 Industries, why was your marketing campaign so deceptive?

2

My theory is the marketing was not supposed to be deceptive. Something happened at the very end of development that caused a whole story rewrite. This could explain the marketing and the multiple little scenes in the campaign that set something up and led nowhere like the foreshadowing of Rolland betraying Infinity or the forerunner going against Cortana.

3

> 2533274974081836;2:
> My theory is the marketing was not supposed to be deceptive. Something happened at the very end of development that caused a whole story rewrite. This could explain the marketing and the multiple little scenes in the campaign that set something up and led nowhere like the foreshadowing of Rolland betraying Infinity or the forerunner going against Cortana.

That could be a possible answer. I’ve heard a lot of those kinds of theories, and regardless of how accurate they may be, it doesn’t change the fact that the marketing was deceptive. Intentional or unintentional it was still deceptive.

4

It was a good rant with valid points but the last paragraph let it down for me.

“attempts at killing the franchise” - what the hell are you talking about?? The franchise would be dead already if it weren’t for 343.

5

Well Master Chief did go rogue. He wasn’t supposed to go after Cotana but he did anyways. Yes it wasn’t much of a hunt since they knew where Chief was going and even why he was going there. My guess is the lead writer couldn’t pull off a story to match the advertising for whatever reason. I wouldn’t say it was deceptive it just didn’t live up to the hype. It was still a good campaign imo just not as great as past ones.

6
  1. Quit your -Yoinking!-, Nancy
  2. 343i doesn’t market the game, Microsoft does
  3. If 343i is trying to kill the series, they’re doing a piss poor job. They could have simply left it to die, and it would have died four years ago.
7

Frankly I was disgusted when chief refused lasky’s orders to return, so he definitely did go rogue.

8

Couldn’t agree much more tbh. I’ve been a halo fan since 3 and hadn’t been a fan of 343i until the H5 marketing campaign. Every day for about 6 months before release i’d google ‘halo 5 news’ I was just so excited. The marketing was amazing, the trailers were just so well produced. I don’t think i’ve ever seen a better marketing campaign for a video game to be honest. Then I finished the entire campaign in 5 hours and 53 minutes, the ‘longest halo campaign to date’ did not live up to the expectations. I wasn’t trying to speed run, but I wasn’t playing slow. The game we were shown just didn’t happen, we only got 3 missions as masterchief for crying out loud. I was very disappointed by the campaign, but I am quite happy with the multiplayer at least, I think that it is a good evolution for halo.
I hope that 343 can make us the game we want for halo 6, with an equally riveting marketing campaign and hopefully a campaign that lives up to it.

9

343 isn’t in charge of the marketing for their games, MS’s dedicated marketing team does that. Their job is to hype the game up, get people excited, and sell a ton of copies of the game. They take whatever elements of the story, and exaggerate it to extreme levels. Say for instance in Halo 6, Chief’s leg gets injured or something. Well, the marketing team would take that and make a trailer where Chief’s leg is either almost completely blown off, or he’d just be missing a leg entirely.

Then in there is the point that there might have been some SERIOUS, bloody rewrites in the story, and the rushed mess was the end result.

10

> 2533274974081836;2:
> My theory is the marketing was not supposed to be deceptive. Something happened at the very end of development that caused a whole story rewrite. This could explain the marketing and the multiple little scenes in the campaign that set something up and led nowhere like the foreshadowing of Rolland betraying Infinity or the forerunner going against Cortana.

So they had a Destiny moment.

11

You brought the game, job done really.

12

I’m convinced there was a total rescripting of the campaign the marketing was so off. I felt lied to when I finished the campaign it was complete garbage. Do get me wrong it plays well there’s just no feeling to it. I hope one day the truth comes out as to what happen here but until then I’m sticking to a late story swap.

13

Yeah whatever happened really screwed the story up. I was able to enjoy it because halo is in my blood, but this was by far the biggest story disappointment. I only hope this was supposed to be a transition story and halo 6 will have some of what we saw in the trailers.

Also, you should never have a game where you have multiple boss battles and the boss is exactly the same every time. That’s just laziness. They could’ve at least had multiple types of promethean leaders who reach had their own strengths and weaknesses.

All this being said, the halo 5 multiplayer is so good, it’s in my top 2 halos and may be in first place.

14

> 2533274860062662;11:
> You brought the game, job done really.

How do you know what the plot will be like until you buy it? Not all of us have the gift of Foresight.

15

I’d love to hear about what the 343 guys were thinking when they saw all the advertisements for their game…

“Lol they’re gonna be pissed when they find out that the campaigns story is nothing like that!”
“Ayeee, who made those ads? That’s not even close to the actual campaign”
“wtf was the guy smoking that made that? Has he even played the game”
“oh -Yoink- this is gonna get real bad, real fast”
“ugh we’re about the get hated on even more than before”

Like honestly, was any of the 343 guys genuinely concerned when they saw that the advertisements were nothing like their actual game’s campaign?

16

> 2533274806711091;4:
> It was a good rant with valid points but the last paragraph let it down for me.
>
> “attempts at killing the franchise” - what the hell are you talking about?? The franchise would be dead already if it weren’t for 343.

“Attempts at killing the franchise” was a summary of all the stumbles and terrible decisions 343 has made. Trust me, they wanna keep it going… Microsoft wants that $$$

17

> 2533274857915830;13:
> Yeah whatever happened really screwed the story up. I was able to enjoy it because halo is in my blood, but this was by far the biggest story disappointment. I only hope this was supposed to be a transition story and halo 6 will have some of what we saw in the trailers.
>
> Also, you should never have a game where you have multiple boss battles and the boss is exactly the same every time. That’s just laziness. They could’ve at least had multiple types of promethean leaders who reach had their own strengths and weaknesses.
>
> All this being said, the halo 5 multiplayer is so good, it’s in my top 2 halos and may be in first place.

I do have a special place in my heart for Halo 5’s mp. I know some may disagree with the true weapon balancing, and say it’s not true to Halo, but I enjoy it. I don’t like 343 taking the micro transaction route, because the free dlc were things that should’ve all shipped with the game. The maps aren’t incredible, and although I’m not a fan of sprint in Halo, and believe that 343 has chosen the wrong path to take by sticking with it, the gameplay is competitive and feels similar to Halo to me… At least, far more than Halo 4 did.

18

> 2535414791138154;8:
> Couldn’t agree much more tbh. I’ve been a halo fan since 3 and hadn’t been a fan of 343i until the H5 marketing campaign. Every day for about 6 months before release i’d google ‘halo 5 news’ I was just so excited. The marketing was amazing, the trailers were just so well produced. I don’t think i’ve ever seen a better marketing campaign for a video game to be honest. Then I finished the entire campaign in 5 hours and 53 minutes, the ‘longest halo campaign to date’ did not live up to the expectations. I wasn’t trying to speed run, but I wasn’t playing slow. The game we were shown just didn’t happen, we only got 3 missions as masterchief for crying out loud. I was very disappointed by the campaign, but I am quite happy with the multiplayer at least, I think that it is a good evolution for halo.
> I hope that 343 can make us the game we want for halo 6, with an equally riveting marketing campaign and hopefully a campaign that lives up to it.

Glad to see I’m not the only one feeling this way. Fingers crossed that third time’s a charm with 343 and Halo 6.

19

> 2533274816788253;5:
> Well Master Chief did go rogue. He wasn’t supposed to go after Cotana but he did anyways. Yes it wasn’t much of a hunt since they knew where Chief was going and even why he was going there. My guess is the lead writer couldn’t pull off a story to match the advertising for whatever reason. I wouldn’t say it was deceptive it just didn’t live up to the hype. It was still a good campaign imo just not as great as past ones.

This isn’t about whether this was a good campaign or not… bc it isn’t. It does everything wrong. This post is about how the campaign is extremely different to what the marketing was advertising.

20

OP, does it even matter at this point? The game has been out for more than half a year, and the marketing campaign has been over since then. However misleading it was, it was still successful. Why? BECAUSE IT MADE YOU WANT TO BUY THE GAME. You bought it, you liked it or didn’t, and moved on. I don’t understand why people are still complaining about advertisements nearly a year old for a product that’s already been out for more than half a year.