Most games can pull this off. Or I think so. I only know Destiny can pull it off. Halo on the other hand, I don’t like how un-interactive you are to the game.
Missions are “play a certain amount of games to unlock next cutscene” is uninteractive.
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The thing is that 343i try to keep multiplayer as canon as possible meaning they want to stray from actually having your Spartan risking death and technically dying permanently.
So if that infection talk was true, then the Banished AI is just making spartans “infected” in a simulation and its all not real in the end anyways…
Of course it was. If Halo had normal 3 month seasons, season 3 would’ve began in May 2022 and lasted until August, somewhat close to Halloween.
See I find it odd that they’ve went out their way to retcon the Created thing, just to do a narrative involving a Banished AI mind controlling Spartans. It’s a bit odd.
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Which made sense in Halo 4 when they were pushing for your character to be one of the main protagonists in Halo Spartan-Ops… … … somewhat.
Honestly I dunno how Spartan Ops even got greenlit the way it was, cutscenes wise.
“Hey so you are going to be playing as Nameless Joe, a member of Fireteam Crimson. Your rival team Fireteam Majestic will be getting all the cutscene glory though. So while players do all the work as their own custom nameless Spartans, the story glory goes to these five characters who are not seen ever in gameplay.”
Like it felt like 343 was trying to emulate the success of Halo Reach’s execution of your multiplayer Spartan being the likeness of Noble 6. However the problem is the fact that Reach’s cutscenes were rendered in-game while Spartan-Ops were pre-rendered cutscenes with higher quality graphics… … … which honestly makes even less sense since that meant more of the budget had to go to cutscene production.
Halo 4’s main campaign was all rendered in-game engine assets, which must have GREATLY helped to save the budget.
But Spartan-Ops must’ve been a money sinkhole with high production value with little returns; especially considering that Season 2 and Season 3 of Spartan-Ops were scrapped from production and their stories told in comic-book form.
But making the multiplayer canon is just… an odd choice.
The multiplayer of Halo before was never canon, it was just players having fun with the sandbox and in arenas that were meant to subtle world-build the setting lore.
But Halo 4 insisted that the multiplayer is on a Star Trek holodeck aboard the UNSC Infinity.
Halo 5 and Halo MCC has the multiplayer being simulations aboard Anvil Station to test out MJOLNIR armor models.
Halo Online was going to have a tie-in narrative but that was scrapped.
And Halo Infinite has the multiplayer being training missions and simulations once again.
What purpose does it have for the multiplayer story to be “you are training for operations” when there are no such operations to be performed?
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I agree that the multiplayer should be seperate to the campaign story and more about creating new tech and maps with real deep spartan custmisations and not to forget building new coalitions.
I feel the story is just a big burden on the Arena experience unfortunate realy as it would of been great to incorperate it in a progressive and timless way.
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The only mulltiplayer story only really actually happen was Halo 4 spartan ops. As well of techinquelly alo reach campaign
And sadly Spartan Ops was Majorly let down by repetitive maps, poor gameplay, and most people not having space to download it. It was such a good concept, but sadly let down on Execution
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Except it was fun still and sadly beats infinite multiplayer story. Which we should of had spartan ops or reach missions scenario in infinite instead of the lame lazy story cinematic only and involving pvp only. Vs how spartan ops and reach story did with the MP spartan in pve story content
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Honestly, this how they should do a multiplayer story ideally if seasons were 3 months each.
Every month they add in a new mission to the game, with each season having 3 missions.
That means during a year we would have 12 missions for a single story arc to unfold surrounding a cast of characters.
This would make it so we have the main campaign surrounding the main series protagonist be its open-world storyline depiction of events on Zeta Halo.
Meanwhile the multiplayer story arcs would each be a more-linear form of gameplay as was traditional in Halo, as the missions are not open world BUT are open-approach in some areas depending on what subtle choices you make.
(For example, Halo 2 Metropolis when you exit the airflow pipes you can either follow the marine NPCs to take care of the enemies on foot or you can drop down to the ground below and get on the Gauss Hog.)
This is how I would want the multiplayer story to be depicted in Halo Infinite, with in some narratives the player character you control is depicted as the armor core you have customized for the season. So for example, let’s say that when Lone Wolves released, we have a story campaign centered on Dinh and Eklund’s operations with your player character being the third member depicted in the promo artwork for the season; who’s armor set-up would alter just like our armor setup did in Halo Reach’s cinematics.
- https://wpassets.halowaypoint.com/wp-content/2022/05/1920x1080_ForModule_S2KeyArt_CLEAN.jpg
Unfortunately instead we get new multiplayer events that lead to cutscenes if you play the events.
I honestly didn’t even finish the campaign… I’ve wanted to go back, but being an adult and a first time dad recently I just would rather play matchmaking and grind for my Onyx back.
Such a let down. The second half of them are decent and I play them sometimes still, but what a disappointment.
I logged into legit Halo 4 recently (not MCC) and I still have 2XPs active from Doritos/Mountain Dew promos. That’s how little I played it
That at least what we all expect. Like Bungie does something like that in destiny 2 seasons tbh and the mp guardians are inmvolved with not only the main dlc story, they are also involved with the linear season story missions.
You mean those annoyingly pointless cutscenes that last like a minute? Yeah. They’ve been pushing this multiplayer narrative garbage since halo 4. It doesn’t work. Nobody wants to “Be a Spartan” that’s not the fantasy Halo fulfills. I don’t know why they don’t get this.
What made chief special was he was The last spartan (yes, I know the books exist. Bla bla bla) and he was YOU! Which made YOU special.
“You are the last of your kind. Bred for combat, built for war. You are master of any weapon, pilot of any vehicle… And fear NO enemy”
^ That was the appeal. That was what satisfied us. Not literally being a Spartan, being the last one. Being a silent, gun-wielding, bulking BA who could handle their business like no other.
Not this fuzzy crap. Not this “We work together, team. We’re Osiris” “Haven’t you always wanted to be a Spartan, uncle sam needs you” nonsense.
Even reach had the foresight to acknowledge how “Special” you were as noble 6 “I read your file lieutenant, even parts oni didn’t want me to. Glad to have your skill set. But you can leave that lone wolves stuff behind.” Which directly references not just the character (noble 6) history, but the player’s who has been the lone wolf (master chief) for three previous games. It’s directly acknowledging the player as an individual who is already special, jumping into the fold. Not the other way around like with 343 and their become a Spartan narrative.
I don’t need them, they need me. Is the point.
Even in the vod preview Halsey refers to noble six (you) as “Hyper lethal” and akin to another unamed, yet obvious Spartan. cough master chief * cough.*
They don’t get it. And they certainly don’t get that nobody who gets down in multiplayer cares about that stuff (for the most part) people just want good maps, gameplay and fun times.
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Multiplayer being canon may also be another scapegoat that 343 is pushing.
An example of one of their scapegoats is why the Mark VI MOD armor that chief wears in Halo 4 came around. In reality it was because the game had a needless art style change. So 343 came up with the excuse of “nanobots” and called it good, despite there being a bunch of holes in that excuse.
If multiplayer is canon, then they only have to make you play as Spartans and not as Elites; since the narrative they push is “Human Good, Alien Bad”.
Notice how when we got the Halo Online armors for Elites in Halo 3 MCC, we had a cinematic with background dialogue providing exposition stating that Elites of the Swords of Sanghelios were now joining the testing simulation missions at Anvil Station?
This scapegoat is counter-productive.
Multiplayer of every other game is not canon.
The only other games I can think of where the PvP is actually canon are Titanfall/Titanfall 2, Rainbow Six: Siege, and CoD MWII.
With Titanfall it is Attrition being a skirmish in a war and you are a soldier in that skirmish.
With R6 Siege it is training in killhouse simulations between operators to hone their skills when not on an active mission.
With CoD MWII the multiplayer matches are now raids or sudden encounters with an enemy faction during a period of time where the local region is engulfed in guerrilla warfare.
But in the end, these are inconsequential as the fact that these are canon matches does not hinder gameplay design or development.
In Halo’s case it is standing in the way of many of the features that Halo should have as a multiplayer.
One of those features is something very important - having fun.
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Oh absolutely, Eps 6-10 were much better but alsadly so few actually played them
I wanted to be a spartan. I liked the direction of being a spartan for multiplayer. And it can work. However it was just done wrong and the pacing was horrible.
And hearing you disregard the books just to keep the whole “last spartan” memo going is super unjustifying. Its like going off of personal emotion.
Besides, thags what they did for Halo Infinite. they did the whole reboot thing to fit the “Last spartan chief being YOU” memo again but people didnt like it.
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I wasn’t “Disregarding” the books in the same manner you’re implying. I’m saying to grasp something that was special when that game came out you have to not take into account the hundreds of transmedia installments because that can blur the view of what made something special within the vacuum of itself in the first place.
It’s the same thing like with any franchise that gets too big for it’s britches. Star wars is so shrouded by its own identity that we forget so much of what was special about that original film has basically nothing to do with any of the extended media and content that’s been released and it has to be recognized that those things often times dilute the originality and original concept that initial idea had that was so appealing in the first place.
People get so bogged down on the minutiae of whether a lightsaber stance is canonically correct or a star destroyer can be destroyed by a hyperspace move that we start to lose the plot of what’s really important about a story, and what’s appealing about said story.
That’s all I mean to say when I say this. So that I can avoid having to write all of… Well, THAT ^
And I think that’s great that YOU specifically like the idea of being a Spartan. And I’m sure you and all 28 people left playing infinite really enjoy that as well.
But realistically most people do not care about that in terms of multiplayer, and it infact seems to turn people away from it because they feel they need to involve themselves and invest in a narrative they didn’t ask for that is actually just there to impose and justify microtransactional armor. Because 343 and Microsoft don’t really care about the “fantasy” of being a Spartan. It’s there to impose a tapestry to tape dollar signs all over. Which is inherently unartistic.
And yeah, they did do that with campaign, which despite the campaign’s flaws has been pretty widely accepted as the best part of the game.
So, yeah…
There is an unfortunate reliance on the transmedia with modern Halo.
The issue it all stems from is gaps. HUGE GAPS.
Take the classic Halo saga for example. Excluding Halo Wars and focusing only on the FPS games, and you have Halo Reach starting off in July 24th of 2552 and then Halo 3 ending in December 11th of 2552.
Less than 6 months have spanned in the time of 5 games. And in order to understand the narrative of these 5 games, you didn’t really have to read any of the books to understand what was going on; with the only arguable required read being Halo: First Strike.
Then we have the new games.
Halo 4 began on July 21st of 2557
Halo 5 begins on October of 2558.
Halo Infinite begins December 12th of 2559 and then after an immediate time-skip goes to May 28th of 2560.
Where before we had 5 games taking place within the span of 143 days in-universe, we now instead have 3 games covering the span of 1,041 days in universe! That is roughly 2.8 years compared to 4 months and 20 days!
As a result, the books could no longer be just fun and optional lore bits.
In the first decade we had only 6 novels and an anthology book.
It is fitting that 343 has the name “Industries” in their company name, since like an industrial assembly line they have mass produced books.
Because now we have another 28 novels that have come out since 2011 and most of them are pretty much required to even begin to understand what is happening in the franchise.
And we aren’t even including the comic books in that number!
As someone who likes stories, I have no problem with getting these books and having a compelling narrative presented to me.
My issue is that most gamers don’t like to sit still and read a book, so as a result it has the end result of alienating most of the fanbase from understanding what the heck is even happening in the story anymore because people are essentially being tasked with homework to enjoy their favorite videogame storyline.
Books for a videogame series should be optional to help set up the setting. They should not be required to understand the world.
You can play Dead Space without reading the novels.
You can play Gears of War without hitting the books.
You can play God of War without having to go through the written works.
But unfortunately you cannot actually enjoy the in-game story of Halo without reading a dozen or so novels.
Sorry for the rant.
It has been quite the day at work today and I needed to vent about something and my work is confidential so this sufficed I suppose.
You know what 343 SHOULD do for halo novels?
— Fractures Anthology Books ! —
Imagine actually getting to flesh out the world of the fractures with what is essentially a written version of Marvel’s “What If…?” series?
We already have 9 Fractures Alt-Canons, so why not cash in on making small anthology books to provide 7 short stories within each of these alternate universes in order to give us multiple perspectives on the alternative realities that we have enjoyed for the past few years?
We already have community interactive “choose-your-own-adventure” stories for Entrenched and Chimera.
Why not take it a step further?
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Still don’t underhand how that works at all. Cause the mark 6 was manufactor somewhere else and sent to ciaro station and chief put that suit on and no reference about the suit having nano bots.