Do You Think Halo Will Be In Better Hands After Bungie's Dismissal? Reach: Failure or New Beginning

Games Other Halo
1

WARNING: THE FEELINGS EXPRESSED IN THIS COMMENT IS SOLEY BASED ON OPINION AND SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AS A TROLL OR “HATER” FLAME.

You wonder why Halo’s community has dropped significantly. Reach happened. Bungie’s last chance to give to the fans, their last chance to give their part of Halo’s story. 10 years have led upto this game, and what did we get? More problems then solutions. Changes to core gameplay, caused people to question their true devotion and love for Halo, so many fled to anothe game, and sadly that was CoD.

Looking back, if Halo 1-3 were released later when CoD was at it’s infancy, we would’ve had a better chance. No, actually Reach was supposed to change all that and it failed to do so on so many levels. To think, Bungie had 10 years to make it right. The story, which was practically written out for them hense, The Fall of Reach. Secondly, Bungie knew what maps we wanted to see return, we wanted an awesome, ever expanding playing zone- they gave us mostly campaign remake maps and the oversaturated and all to familar, Forge World.

Bungie took t easy route on Reach, investing most of their time with the graphics, campaign and backgrounds. When it came to the Multiplayer maps, all they did was copy and pasted, and a few guns/spawns/etc and quit. No time was spent on actuall “new stuff” until the Noble Map Pack, which was okay at best. Obviously their time wasn’t spent to hard due to Tempest’s artsy, flat background. Breakpoint was an obvious attempt to recreate the part of the campaign where you have to fight wave after wave of covenant troops, before your allowed entrance to Halsey’s lab. Anchor 9? Seriously Bungie? The docking bay where Jorge hops out of your Sabre to the Pelican holding the slipspace drive. Wow, must have been hard work creating that map.

Do you see? Almost all the maps are from campaign, and don’t even get me started about the Forge World maps. In short, Reach failed, because Bungie failed Reach. They honestly had something better to do, oh yeah, signing a 10 year contract with Activision. It seems the only few people doing their job during development were Marty O’Donnell and the graphics guys. That gameplay we loved for many years was tossed, guns don’t behave like they used to except the covie’ guns and the Assault Rifle. If a story existed where the spartans had all the AAs at their disposal, why wouldn’t they have had them in the previous games? Because Bungie pulled that concept out of their ever expanding Yoink!. Come on, you had a great run Bungie, had fun, enjoyed some laughs, and wasted $150. Now thats over with, you can open your doors to the new future of Halo, and we can only hope that Halo 4 won’t be a disgrace and shunned by the older, veteran Halo fans. Or else, that might be the end of Halo as we knew it.

2

Dont worry. I agree with you. 343i will fix the issues

3

They didn’t copy and paste the multiplayer maps from the campaign, the multiplayer maps were designed first, and then integrated into the campaign.

4

TL;DR post so I’m just answering the question in the title.

Yes, I most definitely think Halo is in better hands. I feel like Bungie was ready to move on after Halo 3. Reach doesn’t really give you that Halo feel when you play it. You feel like you’re playing a cheap knock-off. Well, at least I do.

343i knows Halo. They get Halo. They respect Halo. It’s what they’re all about. I have full faith in their future, and believe they will do great things for the game.

5

I respectfully disagree with you on many levels. I’ve actually seen the Halo community grow with Reach, myself. It hasn’t reflected in the numbers necessarily, but Reach garnered more new fans than you give it credit for. The main reason Reach has a diminished population in comparison to Halo 3 (~150,000 per day is not bad by ANY means) is the fact that Call of Duty is so popular and casual-friendly, and Activision is successfully saturating the market with their franchise (the word ‘successfully’ is here emphasized as a direct comparison to Activision’s Guitar Hero franchise, which they failed at saturating the market with, but certainly tried). It’s working for them. That’s not a failure in our franchise. It’s never been Halo vs. Call of Duty, like so many players have said it is. I don’t know why we can’t just enjoy our game from an individual standpoint without having to worry about the fact that there are “only” 150,000 other players online. This is the problem with Reach. The game is not a failure; its community is a failure. We’re all so cynical of the game that we’re now unable to accept it for what it is: a solid game with a few bad design decisions. I can understand not liking a few mechanics in Reach. I certainly have my gripes. But to claim that a few small problems single-handedly drove a population down from a previous game is ridiculous.

As an addendum, you have your facts regarding the multiplayer maps pretty wrong. The maps were designed for multiplayer first and implemented into campaign second, not the other way around. Hence, it wasn’t lazy design; it was just bad design. The Reach maps aren’t horrible because they were built for campaign; they’re horrible because they’re horrible. Further, people at Bungie have acknowledged that implementing each multiplayer map into the campaign was a horrible idea. They’ve said if they could do it again, they would make unique spaces for each. That considered, I don’t know why people are still railing on Bungie about their map design. It’s not like they can do anything about it now. They’ve acknowledged the mistakes and moved on. It’s time for us to do so too.

In conclusion, Reach wasn’t a failure. It’s a fun game; it just wasn’t what people were expecting. I’ll consign that bloom is irritating at times, certain armor abilities are no good, and grenades need some kind of tweaking, but these are small flaws when compared to other games. Would you rather have the hackers of Modern Warfare 2? The glitches of Halo 2? The lag of Gears of War 2? Reach could have been much worse. It’s a solidly-built game with some dissatisfying design decisions that can be “fixed” with a patch. So please stop with the hyperbole regarding your dislike of Reach. We get it. You don’t like it. But you’re blowing it out of proportion and discrediting Bungie’s hard work in the same breath. Just because people didn’t like the game doesn’t mean Bungie didn’t work hard on it.

6

> I respectfully disagree with you on many levels. I’ve actually seen the Halo community grow with Reach, myself. It hasn’t reflected in the numbers necessarily, but Reach garnered more new fans than you give it credit for. The main reason Reach has a diminished population in comparison to Halo 3 (~150,000 per day is not bad by ANY means) is the fact that Call of Duty is so popular and casual-friendly, and Activision is successfully saturating the market with their franchise (the word ‘successfully’ is here emphasized as a direct comparison to Activision’s Guitar Hero franchise, which they failed at saturating the market with, but certainly tried). It’s working for them. That’s not a failure in our franchise. It’s never been Halo vs. Call of Duty, like so many players have said it is. I don’t know why we can’t just enjoy our game from an individual standpoint without having to worry about the fact that there are “only” 150,000 other players online. This is the problem with Reach. The game is not a failure; its community is a failure. We’re all so cynical of the game that we’re now unable to accept it for what it is: a solid game with a few bad design decisions. I can understand not liking a few mechanics in Reach. I certainly have my gripes. But to claim that a few small problems single-handedly drove a population down from a previous game is ridiculous.
>
> As an addendum, you have your facts regarding the multiplayer maps pretty wrong. The maps were designed for multiplayer first and implemented into campaign second, not the other way around. Hence, it wasn’t lazy design; it was just bad design. The Reach maps aren’t horrible because they were built for campaign; they’re horrible because they’re horrible. Further, people at Bungie have acknowledged that implementing each multiplayer map into the campaign was a horrible idea. They’ve said if they could do it again, they would make unique spaces for each. That considered, I don’t know why people are still railing on Bungie about their map design. It’s not like they can do anything about it now. They’ve acknowledged the mistakes and moved on. It’s time for us to do so too.
>
> In conclusion, Reach wasn’t a failure. It’s a fun game; it just wasn’t what people were expecting. I’ll consign that bloom is irritating at times, certain armor abilities are no good, and grenades need some kind of tweaking, but these are small flaws when compared to other games. Would you rather have the hackers of Modern Warfare 2? The glitches of Halo 2? The lag of Gears of War 2? Reach could have been much worse. It’s a solidly-built game with some dissatisfying design decisions that can be “fixed” with a patch. So please stop with the hyperbole regarding your dislike of Reach. We get it. You don’t like it. But you’re blowing it out of proportion and discrediting Bungie’s hard work in the same breath. Just because people didn’t like the game doesn’t mean Bungie didn’t work hard on it.

Your balming halo’s decline on CoD? Its not CoDs falt its halo’s falt. also, - 150 thousand people is not alot seriously 300,000 to 150,000 is not alot?

7

> They didn’t copy and paste the multiplayer maps from the campaign, the multiplayer maps were designed first, and then integrated into the campaign.

Which was an absolutely terrible idea. Multiplayer spaces, in my opinion, simply don’t work in campaign. I felt that advancing on the Spire or clearing the area based around Powerhouse were really disjointed and awkward.; there was no flow to the battles.

8

Well, 343 is made up of some bungie members, some of which worked on Combat Evolved, so i have faith in 343i. Bungie did good up to 3, Reach isnt even halo… Bungie took a step fans were not ready for, and a pretty large one at that, halo is not armor abilities, and it isnt more military based, and it doesnt have dirty and faded graphics… they should have given it its own title in my opinion. If they spent more time with listening to the fans and making it parallel to the book so it relates more instead of trying to go out with a bang and making dramatic changes, it would have been a better game. And Bungie needs to learn the word Variety because i hate having maps that are part of the campaign… idk, did they get lazy, or did they actually think it was a good idea???

9

> Your balming halo’s decline on CoD? Its not CoDs falt its halo’s falt

Here’s my question: What decline? Again, I see no decline. That’s massively overstating the situation. ~150,000 players at any given time of the day is more than healthy in relation to the total Xbox LIVE userbase. And if we’re being realistic, the Call of Duty franchise has played a huge part in this “decline”. In 2007, Call of Duty launched its first majorly successful multiplayer installment. Halo also launched Halo 3, its first Xbox 360 installment, that year. While directly competing, Halo 3 beat Modern Warfare numbers-wise. In 2008, Call of Duty released World At War. Halo released…a map pack. Of note is that Modern Warfare managed to maintain a large population past World At War’s release. That means you now have two Call of Duty games on a single platform, each with their own individual, solid, and formidable userbase. In 2009, Call of Duty blew up. It released the record-breaking Modern Warfare 2. This was the pivotal game in Call of Duty taking over Xbox LIVE. It managed to snatch a significant amount of players from Modern Warfare and World At War, but more significantly, it managed to launch Call of Duty even further into the public eye and cement its place as a mainstay console shooter, accessible by everyone and their grandma. Super-success in a box. Addendum: Modern Warfare and World At War still maintained strong-yet-diminished (from Modern Warfare 2) userbases through this year. That’s now three Call of Duty games, each with their own userbase. Also in 2009, Halo released Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST. Halo Wars was essentially purchased for early access to the Mythic map pack; its userbase diminished quickly and by June 2009 it wasn’t even a considerable factor anymore. ODST was originally an expansion pack. Anybody who’s played it knows why it doesn’t even need to be mentioned as competition against Call of Duty. It simply wasn’t big enough.

And now we have 2010, which saw Call of Duty releasing its fourth blockbuster, record-breaking game, Black Ops. As if you expected anything different, Black Ops stole a significant amount of users from other games across the network, maintaining its spot at #1 most-played game across most of the networks it’s available on. And in 2010, we got Reach. This is why Reach fell flat against Call of Duty. Before it, we hadn’t seen significant expansion of the Halo universe in the public eye since 2007, with Halo 3. In comparison, Call of Duty has been growing significantly and breaking records each year. Like a good saying, Call of Duty seems to bear with repeating, and it certainly has. Halo simply hasn’t been doing much to guard its turf, while Call of Duty continues to blow up.

So to say that Call of Duty played little or no factor in Halo’s “decline” (which, again, I disagree with “decline” on principle; I’m just using it for lack of a better word) is just plain ignorant. If Call of Duty didn’t exist, Reach and Halo 3 would certainly be on top of the Xbox LIVE charts. Call of Duty is direct competition, and the bottom line is that it’s just more successful. Four super-success installments over four years has cemented this, in comparison to Halo’s two (extremely spread out) major installments over the same four years.

10

Well if I thought otherwise, then I wouldn’t even be here.

I haven’t been impressed with the Halo games ever since I’ve played Halo 3’s Campaign, so let’s just hope that 343i pick up the pieces. They already have a great multiplayer, just look towards Halo 3’s and give the weapons hitscan. Add in a couple of new weapons, vehicles and armour (in fact, taking Reach’s armoury would be the best idea in this case), then you have one amazing Multiplayer.

As for the Campaign, making it longer and making the levels more fun to play and less repetitive definitely helps.

11

Hm… let me think about this… is Halo in better ‘hands’ with the creators or a bunch of Halo fans that say, “wouldn’t it be cool if Halo had this, this, this and this” and the ‘ex-creators’ of games like CoD. That’s a really hard one, buddy. Let me think for a bit longer…

12

> > Your balming halo’s decline on CoD? Its not CoDs falt its halo’s falt
>
> Here’s my question: What decline? Again, I see no decline. That’s massively overstating the situation. ~150,000 players at any given time of the day is more than healthy in relation to the total Xbox LIVE userbase. And if we’re being realistic, the Call of Duty franchise has played a huge part in this “decline”. In 2007, Call of Duty launched its first majorly successful multiplayer installment. Halo also launched Halo 3, its first Xbox 360 installment, that year. While directly competing, Halo 3 beat Modern Warfare numbers-wise. In 2008, Call of Duty released World At War. Halo released…a map pack. Of note is that Modern Warfare managed to maintain a large population past World At War’s release. That means you now have two Call of Duty games on a single platform, each with their own individual, solid, and formidable userbase. In 2009, Call of Duty blew up. It released the record-breaking Modern Warfare 2. This was the pivotal game in Call of Duty taking over Xbox LIVE. It managed to snatch a significant amount of players from Modern Warfare and World At War, but more significantly, it managed to launch Call of Duty even further into the public eye and cement its place as a mainstay console shooter, accessible by everyone and their grandma. Super-success in a box. Addendum: Modern Warfare and World At War still maintained strong-yet-diminished (from Modern Warfare 2) userbases through this year. That’s now three Call of Duty games, each with their own userbase. Also in 2009, Halo released Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST. Halo Wars was essentially purchased for early access to the Mythic map pack; its userbase diminished quickly and by June 2009 it wasn’t even a considerable factor anymore. ODST was originally an expansion pack. Anybody who’s played it knows why it doesn’t even need to be mentioned as competition against Call of Duty. It simply wasn’t big enough.
>
> And now we have 2010, which saw Call of Duty releasing its fourth blockbuster, record-breaking game, Black Ops. As if you expected anything different, Black Ops stole a significant amount of users from other games across the network, maintaining its spot at #1 most-played game across most of the networks it’s available on. And in 2010, we got Reach. This is why Reach fell flat against Call of Duty. Before it, we hadn’t seen significant expansion of the Halo universe in the public eye since 2007, with Halo 3. In comparison, Call of Duty has been growing significantly and breaking records each year. Like a good saying, Call of Duty seems to bear with repeating, and it certainly has. Halo simply hasn’t been doing much to guard its turf, while Call of Duty continues to blow up.
>
> So to say that Call of Duty played little or no factor in Halo’s “decline” (which, again, I disagree with “decline” on principle; I’m just using it for lack of a better word) is just plain ignorant. If Call of Duty didn’t exist, Reach and Halo 3 would certainly be on top of the Xbox LIVE charts. Call of Duty is direct competition, and the bottom line is that it’s just more successful. Four super-success installments over four years has cemented this, in comparison to Halo’s two (extremely spread out) major installments over the same four years.

Call of Duty won’t last very much longer anyway, in my opinion at least. Activision are just basically bringing out the exact same game every year, at least Reach tried a different approach. Just look at Guitar Hero, a different one was released pretty much every year and now it’s a dead franchise.

13

> > > Your balming halo’s decline on CoD? Its not CoDs falt its halo’s falt
> >
> > Here’s my question: What decline? Again, I see no decline. That’s massively overstating the situation. ~150,000 players at any given time of the day is more than healthy in relation to the total Xbox LIVE userbase. And if we’re being realistic, the Call of Duty franchise has played a huge part in this “decline”. In 2007, Call of Duty launched its first majorly successful multiplayer installment. Halo also launched Halo 3, its first Xbox 360 installment, that year. While directly competing, Halo 3 beat Modern Warfare numbers-wise. In 2008, Call of Duty released World At War. Halo released…a map pack. Of note is that Modern Warfare managed to maintain a large population past World At War’s release. That means you now have two Call of Duty games on a single platform, each with their own individual, solid, and formidable userbase. In 2009, Call of Duty blew up. It released the record-breaking Modern Warfare 2. This was the pivotal game in Call of Duty taking over Xbox LIVE. It managed to snatch a significant amount of players from Modern Warfare and World At War, but more significantly, it managed to launch Call of Duty even further into the public eye and cement its place as a mainstay console shooter, accessible by everyone and their grandma. Super-success in a box. Addendum: Modern Warfare and World At War still maintained strong-yet-diminished (from Modern Warfare 2) userbases through this year. That’s now three Call of Duty games, each with their own userbase. Also in 2009, Halo released Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST. Halo Wars was essentially purchased for early access to the Mythic map pack; its userbase diminished quickly and by June 2009 it wasn’t even a considerable factor anymore. ODST was originally an expansion pack. Anybody who’s played it knows why it doesn’t even need to be mentioned as competition against Call of Duty. It simply wasn’t big enough.
> >
> > And now we have 2010, which saw Call of Duty releasing its fourth blockbuster, record-breaking game, Black Ops. As if you expected anything different, Black Ops stole a significant amount of users from other games across the network, maintaining its spot at #1 most-played game across most of the networks it’s available on. And in 2010, we got Reach. This is why Reach fell flat against Call of Duty. Before it, we hadn’t seen significant expansion of the Halo universe in the public eye since 2007, with Halo 3. In comparison, Call of Duty has been growing significantly and breaking records each year. Like a good saying, Call of Duty seems to bear with repeating, and it certainly has. Halo simply hasn’t been doing much to guard its turf, while Call of Duty continues to blow up.
> >
> > So to say that Call of Duty played little or no factor in Halo’s “decline” (which, again, I disagree with “decline” on principle; I’m just using it for lack of a better word) is just plain ignorant. If Call of Duty didn’t exist, Reach and Halo 3 would certainly be on top of the Xbox LIVE charts. Call of Duty is direct competition, and the bottom line is that it’s just more successful. Four super-success installments over four years has cemented this, in comparison to Halo’s two (extremely spread out) major installments over the same four years.
>
> Call of Duty won’t last very much longer anyway, in my opinion at least. Activision are just basically bringing out the exact same game every year, at least Reach tried a different approach. Just look at Guitar Hero, a different one was released pretty much every year and now it’s a dead franchise.

I disagree with that analysis, purely because people are visibly clamoring for more. Proven by the increasing numbers each year, Call of Duty is still on a steep upward climb. The annual games break countless records. They dominate the top spots on Xbox LIVE. The map packs make record sales. Activision’s saturation marketing methods seem to be working much better for Call of Duty than they did for Guitar Hero. I, too, pray for a Call of Duty decline, but I would say that it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

14

> Anchor 9? Seriously Bungie? The docking bay where Jorge hops out of your Sabre to the Pelican holding the slipspace drive. Wow, must have been hard work creating that map.
[/quote]
You don’t even set foot in this map in the campaign.

15

> I disagree with that analysis, purely because people are visibly clamoring for more. Proven by the increasing numbers each year, Call of Duty is still on a steep upward climb. The annual games break countless records. They dominate the top spots on Xbox LIVE. The map packs make record sales. Activision’s saturation marketing methods seem to be working much better for Call of Duty than they did for Guitar Hero. I, too, pray for a Call of Duty decline, but I would say that it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Let’s just wait until Battlefield 3 comes out, shall we? :wink:

16

> Call of Duty won’t last very much longer anyway, in my opinion at least. Activision are just basically bringing out the exact same game every year, at least Reach tried a different approach. Just look at Guitar Hero, a different one was released pretty much every year and now it’s a dead franchise.

Call of Duty still has a rather large, rabid fan base. I’m sure even if they dropped the ball and released a turd in a box, they still would sell millions because it has the Call of Duty name.

On topic, I actually think that Halo is in better hands now. Since Bungie had very limited control over the Halo IP, I think they were growing tired of it after Halo 3, but a big franchise like Halo isn’t just going to stay dead. And while I believe that they still love the Halo games they created, they lost much of their passion for the series and wanted to move on to something new and inspiring for them. So they went through the steps, tried some new things, and made Halo: Reach, reassuring their fans that it would be the last Halo game they make.

That is where 343 comes in. While being the new kids on the block, they are still dedicated to Halo and the universe that Bungie created. They may be a new developer but they still have a fresh passion for Halo, and knowing that they have a lot to live up to, they are going to take great care in making a game that everyone can enjoy.

17

I am sorry, but I dont see any Halo game topping HCE or even H2 in my mind anytime soon if they build off of Reach. Build off of HCE and you have a instant hit.

18

if only i can make my own halo game

19

While you go a bit over-the-top in terms of hating on Reach (And to some extent, Bungie), your initial question is a sound one:

Yes, Halo is in better hands than with Bungie. 343 has already taken the crucial step of actually LISTENING to the fans, and taking feedback from the community and passing it up the line. Our very own bs angel works day and and day out relaying our feedback to the guys upstairs.

Bungie took a “We know better, we play games WE want to play, and we don’t give a fat YOINK what you all think about it. Like it or leave.” approach to Reach, and it hurt them badly in the public eye. Long-time fans who held out, hoping that Bungie would respond and fix Reach’s problems were burned very badly when Bungie just released a map pack, and then sat back and twiddled their thumbs as the population kept sinking at a drastic rate.

Bungie made 3 amazing games…But either they decided to phone it in, or they got too arrogant with Reach.

Halo needs an attentive and in-tune developer again; One that can deliver a game that WE want to play…Not one that THEY want to play.

20

Yeah, I think Bungie did get too arrogant; something that will not serve them well with a new franchise. I loved how, at one point, they capped the population number, so it wouldn’t fall to its true number.

I’m certainly looking forward to what 343 has to offer. Its great that they are already interacting with the community at this early stage.