Hi everyone!
Ok, I really love everything we’ve seen so far about Halo Infinite, but while surfing YouTube I step on a video that actually concerned me a bit.
I’m not bashing anyone, but this video is kind of a documentary of everything 343 did from birth till late 2018 and it’s very concerning, do you think Halo Infinite will resurrect the series or not?
This is the video: How 343 Industries Has Affected Halo - YouTube
We’ve seen good indication that 343 are going in the generally viewed right direction, but that’s only to the extent of the art style. We haven’t seen any gameplay, know much about the story, or seen any of the other content (multiplayer, customisation, Forge, Theatre, etc). So I don’t think anyone should get too excited yet, else you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. But I do have faith that 343 could do it, and that it is possible. Whether they do or not, remains to be seen.
Same here, I mean I love the Halo Franchise but don’t like where it went with Halo 4 & 5. Also I can’t ignore 343’s track record with Halo games. While I am hopeful this game will be good I can’t help but be skeptical and the trailer and the way it was set up (screams so many tropes and cliche’s) I just can’t help but feel this existential dread that the franchise had already ran its course and is now just being milked for nostalgia purposes as with so many popular (space opera) franchises. Still I hope this is not the case, but we need a little more gestures of good will from 343, Reach coming to the MCC and the MCC comign to the PC was enough to get me back. Still I don’t find the trailer reassuring for the next game. An announcement of playable elites would work but for some reason 343 is intent on keeping them as NPCs.
Halo Infinite doesn’t have to “resurrect” anything, because there isn’t anything that could be potentially “resurrected”.
Halo as a franchise is currently flourishing and more alive & bigger than it has ever been.
> 2533274886490718;4:
> Halo Infinite doesn’t have to “resurrect” anything, because there isn’t anything that could be potentially “resurrected”.
> Halo as a franchise is currently flourishing and more alive & bigger than it has ever been.
Ehhhh, that’s a bold statement. In the eyes of many, I think Halo is viewed as pretty solid but definitely lacking the magic it used to have (and to many hardcore fans, because it’s lost the magic, it is nothing).
As for the video, I didn’t watch it–seems pretty energy draining. What I noticed though is that a lot of people in the comments seemed to be talking about Reach among 343’s games, and that’s interesting to me. I think the community is 50/50 split on Reach, with one half loving it and the other feeling that it was ‘eh.’ I’m definitely not a fan of Reach, and to that end–343i wasn’t the end of “Good Old Halo.” Bungie started that train, and for the matter, I actually prefer Halo 4 and 5 to Reach. 343 didn’t blow it for me until 5, and they definitely have a chance to win back the magic in Infinite.
> 2533274809073993;5:
> > 2533274886490718;4:
> > Halo Infinite doesn’t have to “resurrect” anything, because there isn’t anything that could be potentially “resurrected”.
> > Halo as a franchise is currently flourishing and more alive & bigger than it has ever been.
>
> Ehhhh, that’s a bold statement. In the eyes of many, I think Halo is viewed as pretty solid but definitely lacking the magic it used to have (and to many hardcore fans, because it’s lost the magic, it is nothing).
>
> As for the video, I didn’t watch it–seems pretty energy draining. What I noticed though is that a lot of people in the comments seemed to be talking about Reach among 343’s games, and that’s interesting to me. I think the community is 50/50 split on Reach, with one half loving it and the other feeling that it was ‘eh.’ I’m definitely not a fan of Reach, and to that end–343i wasn’t the end of “Good Old Halo.” Bungie started that train, and for the matter, I actually prefer Halo 4 and 5 to Reach. 343 didn’t blow it for me until 5, and they definitely have a chance to win back the magic in Infinite.
I would consider myself as a hardcore-fan since I started back in the days with CE
and I’ve always been a fan of the lore & the EU and IMO it has more “magic” than it ever had,
the franchise keeps expanding and it is a safe bet that it’ll continue that way.
Halo made it last year into arcade places, this year we will have Halo Outpost
and supposedly next year we’ll get the first Halo live-action series.
If all those things aren’t “magical” enough, people simply choose to be ignorant because
they don’t want any of that Halo “magic”.
If you’re talking about the games exclusively, that’s another topic.
But people need to finally realize, that Halo isn’t just about the games anymore like it used be under Bungie.
It is not simply a series of games anymore, it is a freakin’ big franchise covering multiple forms of media and entertainment,
right now more than ever before, hence saying Halo Infinite needs to “resurrect” anything is factually wrong
and not a matter of opinion.
> 2533274886490718;4:
> Halo Infinite doesn’t have to “resurrect” anything, because there isn’t anything that could be potentially “resurrected”.
> Halo as a franchise is currently flourishing and more alive & bigger than it has ever been.
While I agree it needn’t be resurrected, it can undergo a revival. The player base simply isn’t a larger as it was with Halo 3. Whether it can reach that level again is one matter, as there wasn’t just one reason why Halo 3 was so popular. But it can certainly be more popular again.
> 2666640315087182;3:
> Same here, I mean I love the Halo Franchise but don’t like where it went with Halo 5. Also I can’t ignore 343’s track record with Halo games. While I am hopeful this game will be good I can’t help but be skeptical and the trailer and the way it was set up (screams so many tropes and cliche’s) I just can’t help but feel this existential dread that the franchise had already ran its course and is now just being milked for nostalgia purposes as with so many popular (space opera) franchises. Still I hope this is not the case, but we need a little more gestures of good will from 343, Reach coming to the MCC and the MCC comign to the PC was enough to get me back. Still I don’t find the trailer reassuring for the next game. An announcement of playable elites would work but for some reason 343 is intent on keeping them as NPCs.
Yeah this is mostly my thoughts, I guess we’ll have to wait for more news. I tried watching the trailer in 4K and analyze the armor looking for eventual thruster packs but I couldn’t find any evidence of them being part of the armor or lacking (So, no clues about gameplay sadly, I hope it will be more on the classic side - of course 
).
> 2533274886490718;6:
> > 2533274809073993;5:
> > > 2533274886490718;4:
> > > Halo Infinite doesn’t have to “resurrect” anything, because there isn’t anything that could be potentially “resurrected”.
> > > Halo as a franchise is currently flourishing and more alive & bigger than it has ever been.
> >
> > Ehhhh, that’s a bold statement. In the eyes of many, I think Halo is viewed as pretty solid but definitely lacking the magic it used to have (and to many hardcore fans, because it’s lost the magic, it is nothing).
> >
> > As for the video, I didn’t watch it–seems pretty energy draining. What I noticed though is that a lot of people in the comments seemed to be talking about Reach among 343’s games, and that’s interesting to me. I think the community is 50/50 split on Reach, with one half loving it and the other feeling that it was ‘eh.’ I’m definitely not a fan of Reach, and to that end–343i wasn’t the end of “Good Old Halo.” Bungie started that train, and for the matter, I actually prefer Halo 4 and 5 to Reach. 343 didn’t blow it for me until 5, and they definitely have a chance to win back the magic in Infinite.
>
> I would consider myself as a hardcore-fan since I started back in the days with CE
> and I’ve always been a fan of the lore & the EU and IMO it has more “magic” than it ever had,
> the franchise keeps expanding and it is a safe bet that it’ll continue that way.
>
> Halo made it last year into arcade places, this year we will have Halo Outpost
> and supposedly next year we’ll get the first Halo live-action series.
> If all those things aren’t “magical” enough, people simply choose to be ignorant because
> they don’t want any of that Halo “magic”.
>
> If you’re talking about the games exclusively, that’s another topic.
> But people need to finally realize, that Halo isn’t just about the games anymore like it used be under Bungie.
> It is not simply a series of games anymore, it is a freakin’ big franchise covering multiple forms of media and entertainment,
> right now more than ever before, hence saying Halo Infinite needs to “resurrect” anything is factually wrong
> and not a matter of opinion.
Halo is bigger than ever, but in a lot of ways it is smaller for it. Of all those expansions to the universe, very few attain the quality of the original Eric Nylund novels. It’s like, I often find myself reading new material because it’s “Halo,” but not necessarily because it particularly interests me. New additions to the universe often feel largely inconsequential, and that’s frustrating. Halo hasn’t captured my imagination consistently since around 2012/2013, when the last Greg Bear novel was released. That’s not to say there’s nothing good there. I’d say that Hunt the Truth was amazing, the Greg Bear novels were great as far as both illuminating and deepening Halo’s larger mysteries , and Halo Wars 2 had some frightfully good cutscenes (Cutter’s speech, though totally unearned that early in the game, was awesome. The way they used the planet’s sentinels to destroy that carrier was insane). Thing that bums me out is that those moments are here and there now among a gamut of content that is for the most part just so-so. I would say there’s almost as much good stuff that there used to be, but now it’s hidden among a larger clutter, and that larger clutter cheapens Halo’s name. And that effect is especially felt when a lot of that good content had the universe pointed in a direction that, we were led to believe, would manifest itself in a mainline game. It didn’t, and you can’t help but start to wonder why you read all that material in the first place. The Greg Bear novels, for instance, are not great novels by their own merit, but they are incredible if you’re invested in the lore of Halo. They do so much to add to the mythos, but when that mythos gets trashed by a seemingly arbitrary change in narrative… the whole thing starts to fall apart. Ultimately, the success of the “franchise” still rides on the success of the games–if they don’t do a good job of tying all the miscellaneous stuff together, the franchise doesn’t really work. Halo 5 absolutely failed on that count, and 343 knows it. That’s why they’re resetting with Infinite, and that, to my mind, is a good move. Clear the air, start fresh, allow whatever intrigue they can muster to actually matter again.
Bigness don’t equate to quality.
Side note: I’m actually excited for the TV show.
> 2535441330154481;8:
> > 2666640315087182;3:
> > Same here, I mean I love the Halo Franchise but don’t like where it went with Halo 5. Also I can’t ignore 343’s track record with Halo games. While I am hopeful this game will be good I can’t help but be skeptical and the trailer and the way it was set up (screams so many tropes and cliche’s) I just can’t help but feel this existential dread that the franchise had already ran its course and is now just being milked for nostalgia purposes as with so many popular (space opera) franchises. Still I hope this is not the case, but we need a little more gestures of good will from 343, Reach coming to the MCC and the MCC comign to the PC was enough to get me back. Still I don’t find the trailer reassuring for the next game. An announcement of playable elites would work but for some reason 343 is intent on keeping them as NPCs.
>
> Yeah this is mostly my thoughts, I guess we’ll have to wait for more news. I tried watching the trailer in 4K and analyze the armor looking for eventual thruster packs but I couldn’t find any evidence of them being part of the armor or lacking (So, no clues about gameplay sadly, I hope it will be more on the classic side - of course ).
Well from a marketing standpoint it works everything about that trailer works are the marketing level. The whole we won’t announce the game this trailer is for until the middle of the trailer (looked at the sides it was blank until chief was relieved then the screens lit up with the words Halo Infinite), the try and make you feel for this character by putting him in crisis and then showing his motivations (his family) just hinting at things (like the UNSC emblem before the reveal of the chief). Dropping a few key codes this is all amazing marketing but marketing is a double edge sword.
We all have been burnt by sub-par products that were backed by an impressive marketing campaign before. The thing is now we can’t trust the marketing campaign because as we have seen marketing has become more and more aggressive but the products and services have steadily declined in quality and the value is simply over inflated. But brands and even companies live and die on their marketing. So it isn’t the best product but the best product that everyone knows about that wins. Thing is now because of the lack of trust in trailers and press outlets many consumers have turned to what was at first grassroots channels such as YouTube and Social media to get more word of mouth type or responses to try and get an objective review or a point of view from someone with similar bias. Thing is the marketers have already caught on and there has been substantial amount of investment into influencers to sell the product.
You know what will set me at ease, watching marketing screw up. I want to see the physics bugs such as a warthog going through the spin cycle because of a physics engine glitch that we saw throughout the series. I want to know what level of development this game is (pre-alpha, alpha, closed beta), I don’t want to see any pros serving the role as influences, I want to see some random guy that posts a youtube video on why this game will suck. not because I hope the game does poorly, but because I want to know what is wrong to curve my expectations before I go out and discover the hard and upsetting way. I want 343 and Microsoft to slack off on the marketing and get a fine-tuned game rather than a game with a overaggressive marketing plan. So far all I have seen is the plan and it doesn’t tell me about the game. The trailer feels so safe that I can swear I have seen it before.
> 2666640315087182;10:
> > 2535441330154481;8:
> > > 2666640315087182;3:
> > > Same here, I mean I love the Halo Franchise but don’t like where it went with Halo 5. Also I can’t ignore 343’s track record with Halo games. While I am hopeful this game will be good I can’t help but be skeptical and the trailer and the way it was set up (screams so many tropes and cliche’s) I just can’t help but feel this existential dread that the franchise had already ran its course and is now just being milked for nostalgia purposes as with so many popular (space opera) franchises. Still I hope this is not the case, but we need a little more gestures of good will from 343, Reach coming to the MCC and the MCC comign to the PC was enough to get me back. Still I don’t find the trailer reassuring for the next game. An announcement of playable elites would work but for some reason 343 is intent on keeping them as NPCs.
> >
> > Yeah this is mostly my thoughts, I guess we’ll have to wait for more news. I tried watching the trailer in 4K and analyze the armor looking for eventual thruster packs but I couldn’t find any evidence of them being part of the armor or lacking (So, no clues about gameplay sadly, I hope it will be more on the classic side - of course ).
>
> Well from a marketing standpoint it works everything about that trailer works are the marketing level. The whole we won’t announce the game this trailer is for until the middle of the trailer (looked at the sides it was blank until chief was relieved then the screens lit up with the words Halo Infinite), the try and make you feel for this character by putting him in crisis and then showing his motivations (his family) just hinting at things (like the UNSC emblem before the reveal of the chief). Dropping a few key codes this is all amazing marketing but marketing is a double edge sword.
>
> We all have been burnt by sub-par products that were backed by an impressive marketing campaign before. The thing is now we can’t trust the marketing campaign because as we have seen marketing has become more and more aggressive but the products and services have steadily declined in quality and the value is simply over inflated. But brands and even companies live and die on their marketing. So it isn’t the best product but the best product that everyone knows about that wins. Thing is now because of the lack of trust in trailers and press outlets many consumers have turned to what was at first grassroots channels such as YouTube and Social media to get more word of mouth type or responses to try and get an objective review or a point of view from someone with similar bias. Thing is the marketers have already caught on and there has been substantial amount of investment into influencers to sell the product.
>
> You know what will set me at ease, watching marketing screw up. I want to see the physics bugs such as a warthog going through the spin cycle because of a physics engine glitch that we saw throughout the series. I want to know what level of development this game is (pre-alpha, alpha, closed beta), I don’t want to see any pros serving the role as influences, I want to see some random guy that posts a youtube video on why this game will suck. not because I hope the game does poorly, but because I want to know what is wrong to curve my expectations before I go out and discover the hard and upsetting way. I want 343 and Microsoft to slack off on the marketing and get a fine-tuned game rather than a game with a overaggressive marketing plan. So far all I have seen is the plan and it doesn’t tell me about the game. The trailer feels so safe that I can swear I have seen it before.
Hmmhhm I wouldn’t really like it like that, BUT something similar and very cool would be showing us some bi-weekly or monthly development updates after the beta. Bungie did those vi-docs with Reach and they were perfect to me 343 could give us a more modern spin on this through live streams on Twitch for example!
The biggest differences between all of 343i’s past games and Infinite is different leadership. You get the right people up top and it can change the world. So far that’s being proven at least for me but we’ll have to wait and see once the game is actually out, there could be some things that will be really bad. If this game was still being made under Josh Holmes and Don Mattrick I wouldn’t have much faith in it being better than H4/5 but so far Chris Lee and Phil Spencer have been doing the right things.
> 2533275031939856;12:
> The biggest differences between all of 343i’s past games and Infinite is different leadership. You get the right people up top and it can change the world. So far that’s being proven at least for me but we’ll have to wait and see once the game is actually out, there could be some things that will be really bad. If this game was still being made under Josh Holmes and Don Mattrick I wouldn’t have much faith in it being better than H4/5 but so far Chris Lee and Phil Spencer have been doing the right things.
Well replacing Don Mattrick with Phil Spencer might mean good news for Scarlet but not necessarily for Infinite. Those guys are more responsible for the console instead of the game. It would be like Bill Gates making all the decisions for Halo other than the final Yay/Nay at the end of production. Josh Holmes was more responsible for Waypoint then later H4 so not a perfect resume there, Chris Lee (I think this is the Chris Lee we are talking about) was part responsible for Too Human so there has been missteps as well.
> 2666640315087182;13:
> > 2533275031939856;12:
> > The biggest differences between all of 343i’s past games and Infinite is different leadership. You get the right people up top and it can change the world. So far that’s being proven at least for me but we’ll have to wait and see once the game is actually out, there could be some things that will be really bad. If this game was still being made under Josh Holmes and Don Mattrick I wouldn’t have much faith in it being better than H4/5 but so far Chris Lee and Phil Spencer have been doing the right things.
>
> Well replacing Don Mattrick with Phil Spencer might mean good news for Scarlet but not necessarily for Infinite. Those guys are more responsible for the console instead of the game. It would be like Bill Gates making all the decisions for Halo other than the final Yay/Nay at the end of production. Josh Holmes was more responsible for Waypoint then later H4 so not a perfect resume there, Chris Lee (I think this is the Chris Lee we are talking about) was part responsible for Too Human so there has been missteps as well.
Don rushed and made 343i do too much in too little time so while he wouldn’t have been the one making smaller decisions he definitely had a large role in their failures. Phil actually seems to be giving 343i the time they need so that’s already a lot better than Don. It depends on the publisher/developer relationship but you’d be surprised how badly publishers can ruin games whereas maybe with a different publisher, said game could’ve been a lot better.
So far I’m really happy with Chris. Everything we’ve seen and heard of Infinite is better than H5 when comparing areas of the game we know about at the moment. Again though we haven’t seen anything so some bad stuff could definitely arise and change my mind.
Side note: I’m actually one of the weirdos that enjoyed Too Human haha. I know it had flaws like it’s oversimplified combat but I still managed to have quite a lot if fun with it. What was Chris’ role in that game?
> 2533275031939856;14:
> > 2666640315087182;13:
> > > 2533275031939856;12:
> > > The biggest differences between all of 343i’s past games and Infinite is different leadership. You get the right people up top and it can change the world. So far that’s being proven at least for me but we’ll have to wait and see once the game is actually out, there could be some things that will be really bad. If this game was still being made under Josh Holmes and Don Mattrick I wouldn’t have much faith in it being better than H4/5 but so far Chris Lee and Phil Spencer have been doing the right things.
> >
> > Well replacing Don Mattrick with Phil Spencer might mean good news for Scarlet but not necessarily for Infinite. Those guys are more responsible for the console instead of the game. It would be like Bill Gates making all the decisions for Halo other than the final Yay/Nay at the end of production. Josh Holmes was more responsible for Waypoint then later H4 so not a perfect resume there, Chris Lee (I think this is the Chris Lee we are talking about) was part responsible for Too Human so there has been missteps as well.
>
> Don rushed and made 343i do too much in too little time so while he wouldn’t have been the one making smaller decisions he definitely had a large role in their failures. Phil actually seems to be giving 343i the time they need so that’s already a lot better than Don. It depends on the publisher/developer relationship but you’d be surprised how badly publishers can ruin games whereas maybe with a different publisher, said game could’ve been a lot better.
>
> So far I’m really happy with Chris. Everything we’ve seen and heard of Infinite is better than H5 when comparing areas of the game we know about at the moment. Again though we haven’t seen anything so some bad stuff could definitely arise and change my mind.
>
> Side note: I’m actually one of the weirdos that enjoyed Too Human haha. I know it had flaws like it’s oversimplified combat but I still managed to have quite a lot if fun with it. What was Chris’ role in that game?
Well Don was a lot of things I didn’t care much for and even if he did rush 343, Frank should have had the clout to push him back a little. But still we had Halo 5. I blame Frank for Halo 5, I blame Don for the Xbox1 both are terrible products that the market forced improvements on until they were up to mediocre quality.
As for Too Human it is not that bad of a game, but it is locked in IP hell right now and looking at the history, especially the lawsuits, that is a disaster I wouldn’t want to be associated with. Now Chris Lee wasn’t a part of the leadership that ended up sealing its fate, but here is a GDC interview of it that can explain his role in it. It looks like he made the best of a bad situation but we really don’t want Infinite to be a bad situation.