Precisely. You can’t really hire someone who is busy with something else. It is actually the reason why Gabriel Thorne was replaced by Edward Buck in Halo 5 Guardians. The actor for Thorne was busy with another project. Nathan Fillion however was available and eager… shame what Brian Reed did to the script however.
The Blam! Engine.
An overhauled Blam! Engine.
It used the Blam! Engine.
Then the Blam! Engine was torn down extensively and rebuilt for Halo: Reach, while ODST was also developed. Most likely also saw changes to the Engine.
Halo 4 used an updated Blam! Engine.
Both Halo anniversaries used the Blam! Engine as well as the Sabre3D engine.
As mentioned, Halo: Reach used an extensively updated Blam! Engine.
It used an updated version of the Blam! Engine.
Turns out to be derived from the Blam! Engine.
Because it’s not really more time being put in as new tools have come into play improving capabilities while old tools improved a lot.
Workers have been paid.
They didn’t go six years unpaid.
Not really, consumer base has grown considerably and there’s very little actual physical copies in rotation with the move to digital meaning unlimited copies.
The 60$ price tag can’t be seen as anything but a limited content starter as many editions feature more content and a higher price tag as well.
Not to mention, higher budgets is not something which should go out over the consumer. Publishers and developers overspending isn’t a consumer problem.
Wasn’t a large part of the development team timed contractors?
The fanbase was actually in high hopes with the move to i343 as Reach wasn’t that popular, and i343 fixed some of the issues people had with the game.
Not to mention they talked about Halo “returning to form” with Halo 4, initially.
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The reason Infinite feels like it’s lacking maps isn’t because of the number of maps. It’s because of two things:
- Number of game modes/playlists is really important, because it basically multiplies how replayable the maps are. Infinite has fewer playlists than Halo 2 or 3, so it feels like it has less content.
- The BTB maps in Infinite are hot flaming garbage. They’re all awful. Halo 3 had only 3 BTB maps at launch but Sandtrap and Valhalla were both excellent.
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As someone who did 3D modeling a decade ago (with a paid product) and got back into it as a hobby recently via a free program…the tools available to a 3D artist are leaps and bounds above what there was before.
Producing a high quality 3D asset by today’s standards is considerably easier than producing them with the old tools.
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3 years ago? Very hard to believe.
… you do realize that once people actually got a taste of what 343 was offering as “Halo” for Halo 4 that a majority of the fanbase ranted on the forums and made youtube videos dismantling the problems of Halo 4 right?
We indeed were optimistic at first… until screenshots of Halo 4’s new style came out. And we finally got to play the game. The Campaign story was great. The gameplay tho… the weapons sandbox was lacking. Multiplayer playercount plummeted after six months. Players didn’t really take a liking to the “Call of Halo” style gameplay.
What? Yes, of course you can. You just need a suffiently large monetary incentive. That was literally the point.
As for the rest of your comment: Companies aren’t people. And even individual people can work on multiple projects concurrently, by splitting their time appropriately. In the case of other companies, even if they were all completely booked out with their own projects (which would be quite a coincidence with five different studios), additional money by Microsoft would enable them to hire more people. Although if that were necessary, 343 could literally hire some themselves, throwing out the middle man.
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Here is the downside of gaming today. Everyone expects the same level of service from a $60 game compared to 10-15 years ago. That will never happen. Costs have gone up, inflation, etc., yet the retail price of games has largely remained the same. You want the same level of service, price of games will go up. Or if they stay the same, you get less for your $$, look at food where you are getting less for the same price. Yes, Infinite has a large budget, but accounting for inflation, what is the actual budget comparison and breakdowns?
Infinite launched with 10 maps, which is roughly what I was expecting and comparable to previous titles.
However, all of Infinite Arena maps can be broken down to a 3x3 grid, with very little verticality in the maps. Not to mention, all are 3 lanes. I would have to go back to compare to older maps if this is true for them. Because of this, all the maps feel and play the same. There is no variety and make it seem like there is less maps than previous games.
This is a classic case of QUANTITY NOT QUALITY, and the game suffers because of this.
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Yet another example of 343 copying design elements of COD without understanding that Halo is not COD.
I hope this changes for new maps that (eventually) get released.
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Which has nothing to do with the change, but the product they put out.
People weren’t unhappy that there was a change in developer but that the new developer put out a sub-par product.
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Lets say Saber Interactive is contracted by Activision to work on DLC Map Pack No.1-4 for the latest CoD game.
They want it done well and they want it done efficiently so they contracted 3/4 of the staff to work on the packs.
The remaining 1/4 of staff might pick up smaller projects while they complete that contract. If 343 approached that 1/4 of staff, they COULD make new maps… but would their production time be efficient enough to make it matter by the time Forge comes out and players can make their own maps?
Exactly what I said.
People were unhappy with the end result from the last exchange of hands. Would you want to risk history repeating itself or the company that has learned from its past mistakes to attempt to rectify them?
I think Halo Infinite’s map issue is one of variety (or lack thereof), rather than quantity.
8 out of the 11 Halo 3 launch maps had man canons built-in, compared to 4 out of 10 Halo Infinite maps.
Every single Halo 3 launch map had fusion coils somewhere on them, compared to just 2 of Halo Infinite’s maps, and this is after the universally loved addition of throwabable coils. They’re not even emphasizing their new mechanics!
Halo 3 had many maps that could be described as “three lane” however they had distinct verticality, with whole lanes stacked on top of each other, making them something like “2 x 3 lane” or “3 x 3 lane” maps.
Then there’s elements like the immovable boxes and numerous chest high walls which act as cover, compared to the physics enabled objects and more organic map goemetry which littered Halo 3’s maps. That game also wasn’t afraid to have high risk-high reward no man’s land areas, whereas in Infinite, cover is almost always a slide away.
I’ll stop before I write a dissertation (or mention sprint/ clamber), map design is hardly my area of expertise, but I hope I got my points across. I really wish the Halo community as a whole would develop a more nuanced eye for criticism, that dissects the game’s elements beyond “number of maps” or “number of guns”, but alas.
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Activision wanting a game done well?
Let’s stay in reality, why don’t we?
Considering Forge will not arrive until Season 3, while Season 2 has already been delayed from March to May, and those employees would have been working on the maps since before Infinite’s release - the original release, that is, not the delayed release, one year later - they would have had at the very least 18 months to work on maps.
How many maps do you guess you could make in 1.5 years, given that full games usually have a total development time of 3 years? Five? Eight? Ten?
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Please explain how 343 has learned from past mistakes since they made almost all of them again with Infinite.
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Which ones? One of the distinctive features of “three lane” map design is the ability to move between any segment of the created “grid”. Halo 3’s maps didn’t really do that.
There were maps like the Pit which have distinctive lanes on the map, but they don’t intersect - once you go down one of them, you’re committed to your position.
Problem isnt the number of maps. it’s the quality and use of the maps. Why In the blue hell is Launch site in 4v4 Slayer? What fool up in 343 said that was a great idea.
The big beam battle maps? Need to take lessons from the map Behemoth. As Horrible as that map is, as well as the spawns, if you’re going to have vehicles on a Halo map and snipers put them in a fair space for both freaking teams. The fact that a team can be winning and STILL get advantageous vehicles like the annoying wasp is crazy. Meanwhile the enemy team gets a mongoose 
. Or when the Tank comes 30 seconds WHEN THE GAME IS ABOUT TO END.
I’ve rarely seen the tank in this game. And the lopsided conflict becomes even more lopsided. I’ve never hated Big team Slayer until this game. I get they wanted to have an uneven terrain theme but the way it’s turned out is downright sloppy.
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They have made an art style return to be nostalgic once again.
They brought back the music that was absent the last two games. Halo 4 had way too many tracks that felt like other game soundtracks (Composer’s intro scene music LITERALLY is just Star Wars overtures) and Halo 5’s was just generic strings a lot of the time.
They got rid of the sinful “writer” Brian Reed and immediately cut as many ties as possible with the fanfiction-made-canon that is Halo 5 Guardians (Brian rewrote the game script partway through development, so the marketing teams and Hunt The Truth were still using the original script, which is why we felt cheated by the marketing).
Master Chief is back to being stoic yet still has that slightly emotional side we saw in Halo 4, which is MUCH BETTER than how he was presented in Halo 5 Guardians as the guy who followed a carrot on a stick.
The Hydra was nerfed to have a slower fire-rate so as to make it more balanced and less of a legal-cheat-gun.
It probably wouldn’t be to bad if the maps played and looked better. The maps just aren’t that impressive.
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And as such, a change of developer doesn’t matter at all.
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