In 2005 everyone played Halo. People bought the game for both the campaign and multiplayer equally. After the release of Halo 4, it was apparent the focus of Halo shifted.
“Bungie’s focus was the gameplay, but they kept the story solid. If you want emotion out of your narrative, Halo 4 is your game. But if you want a smart, immersive, high concept, epic masterpiece on a grand galactic scale, go no further than Halo 2 and 3. I get more out of one cutscene in any Bungie game than I got out of all of Halo 4. That’s just me. If you watch that Making Halo 3 documentary series and compare it to the making of Halo 4, you’ll see the way these two developers did things are fundamentally at odds. A lot of things they say in this video go directly against the science Bungie laid out in Halo. 343 didn’t even use that as a foundation for their base formula.
H4’s story abandoned many things H3’s story left hanging unaddressed, and reconfigured a lot of things that H3 laid to rest and brought to a close. They may have justified it in their canon EU, but it’s still odd considering how many things H3 left open for them to work with. - The whole tone of Halo 4 lacks any of the epic scale, eerie cosmic mystery, or fun charismatic sense of humor the Bungie games had… The thing I loved most about Halo was the serenity of the warfare… you’d be killing aliens with weapons that had pleasant yet satisfying sound design in beautiful environments easy on the eyes with angelic chanting in the background before ancient sounding tribal drums would follow the rising stakes of the battle into exciting symphonies overlaid on sounds of gorgeous looking explosions and debris… maybe you kinda see how in love I am with this game series as it was formerly. There was always a lot of subtlety and nuance to Halo’s story, in character mannerisms, dialogue, and cinematography. Halo 4 was just never in depth because the immersion was the focus of the experience rather than the theatricality. Halo 4 changed all of that. Halo 5 story was definitely flawed and very disappointing especially after being subjected to that amazing ad campaign and the riveting Hunt the Truth series. But I can appreciate what it was going for, despite being executed not as good as it could have been. It felt like a Halo fanfiction, but a fan fiction is a bit closer to the real thing than a deep themed story that deliberately seeks to change everything Halo is. At least that’s how I see things. When it comes to the multiplayer, I don’t hate Halo 5’s game play, it’s actually kinda fun, but I much prefer PC or Reach matchmaking, where the focus is more on the gun play than the movement. I think the biggest thing 343 keeps doing that I don’t like when it comes to the multiplayer is the map and weapon design correlation, which you either know what I’m talking about or you don’t, it’s really obnoxious to try and explain, haha… but the flow of the map should have the guns and their different strengths and weaknesses in mind when different areas are designed. The new spartan abilities kinda make most encounters in Halo 5 arena close range ones, so all the weapons are kinda like the CE pistol; they’re all optimized to be versatile for each kind of encounter, making the focus of the game play the movement, so the maps are more designed around that rather than the weapons, although the power weapons do kinda have that relationship with the maps they’re featured in, to some degree. It makes a good, old fashioned game of slayer feel a bit repetitive after a while.” - Chris Merritt Youtuber
I respect 343. They are a fantastic company. I ask to increase sales, to not continue to keep changing Halo in the same way one would change Star Trooper to Star Trek. 343 please have Halo keep an epic feel and think of each campaign’s level design in game play before story. I pray that 343 will rise to more success with angelic chanting in the background before ancient sounding tribal drums following the rising stakes of the battle into exciting symphonies overlaid on sounds of gorgeous looking explosions and debris. Halo Waypoint web masters, I love you guys and hope you can aid Halo by spreading the news of how great Halo at its core really is.
Here’s some awesome idea for the Halo universe:
- ODST 2 - Halo story on the Marines at war against insurrectionist before the Covenant appears. - ONI operations and stealth missions - Spartan Fireteams, involving a Spartan turns bad so a fireteam is sent to assassinate him/her - UNSC space battles including fighters - Sangheili battles or Arbiter only story and battle a civil war - Halo Origin, the view from a Forerunner and the start of a war against the Flood
Ouch, wall of text.
You and I remember Halo 4 very differently. And Halo 3. And 2. That’s okay though.
Sorry you didn’t like Halo 5 campaign. I continue to labor in the conviction that all of you played a different campaign than the one I played. Mine was awesome. Unlike the earlier campaigns in many respects, but the same in awesomeness. And for my money, better than any previous campaign for replayability. But that’s just me.
The commentary on H5 map design seems to me to come from someone who has little use for anything apart from 4v4 game play. And that’s fine, if that’s the way you like to play. I play warzone, and those maps, even the ones I hate for personal and arbitrary reasons, are all masterpieces. Each and every one. And I think that type of game play, on that scale, starts to make a little more sense of the weapon sandbox. Yes, the sandbox is dramatically altered and enlarged for WZ, but the basic arena weapons are still there, and they can still make an outting to great effect for the player who is so inclined.
Please don’t quote youtubers on anything. Ever. You are entitled to your own opinion, and they’re no more valid because they allign with somebody who has a few hundred subscribers to his rantings and ravings.
As for the ever-changing character of Halo… not to continue to be contradictory but… I’d rather have it continue to “evolve” than just stagnate and have every single new game be a re-skin of the old one with a couple of “new” maps. I don’t need every story to be “epic,” but, that said, I’m not even sure in what way H5’s campaign is not epic in scale. I can understand if you didn’t like it, but I can’t conceive of how anyone would fail to find a quality of epicness in it. Anyway, I don’t care if they choose to tell an epic story or small-scale and personal story… as long as they tell it well. Was H5’s story 100% perfect? Of course not. Neither were any of the others, so where people get off arbitrarily deciding to puff-piece one and hatchet-job another is really beyond me.
Enough. Now you’ve got me wall-of-texting!