Halo 4 was a very strange game. (yes, I know an understatement to be sure).
343 had finally taken the reigns of Halo after Bungie departed from Microsoft and began to develop Destiny with Activision. And 343 did have big shoes to fill. Sadly, the developers were overcompensating for everything and made feet that were both the wrong size and the wrong shape for the shoes that Bungie had passed down.
Halo 4 was made in the span of two years. 2010 saw the launch of Halo Reach, and in 2012 we received Halo 4. There is a problem right there in the numbers.
2012 - 2010 = 2. When it comes to major releases, Bungie had spaced Halo out over the course of a three-year development cycle.
2001 saw the world gifted with Combat Evolved.
2004 we received the sequel.
2007 we received the conclusion to the trilogy.
Oh you are pointing at the spinoffs? 2009 saw the release of both Halo Wars and Halo 3 ODST, just one year prior to the release of Halo Reach? Well lemme tell you about those real quick. Halo Wars was developed by Ensemble Studios with some hesitant help from Bungie. It was originally not even going to be a Halo game but Microsoft insisted. As for Halo 3 ODST? It was originally planned to be a DLC for Halo 3, but became it’s own standalone title once it got big enough to warrant a little independance. It still was built on the Halo 3 engine, with some tweaks here and there. The dev team was a small fraction of Bungie’s main force, meanwhile in the years between Halo 3 and Reach, they spent those three years making a great game to act as their send-off.
343 Industries then made a rule that was bad. A Halo Game for EVERY Year. Here is why that is bad.
Halo CE was understandable to be their first title, Halo was now a decade old and deserved something to show for it. But now that meant that 343 had to keep to their promise and release a Halo game within 2011. In hindsight what they should’ve done was not rush development on Halo 4 and INSTEAD commission Saber Interactive or another 3rd Party studio to make a quick game for them using the Halo Reach engine so that 343 could’ve focused their efforts on Halo 4. But instead, the reality is that 343 made Halo 4 and released it in 2012 alongside Halo 4 : King of the Hill. And it was a game that left a taste in your mouth like someone dipped your chocolate ice cream in honey mustard.
The game broke a little something I call “The Golden Rule of Game Design”, by making a numbered sequel that was HARDLY anything like the ones that came before it. The visuals were entirely changed to not resemble the predecessors, the audio of the weapons and vehicles was great for some items but terrible for others, the soundtrack by Neil Davidge was… interesting. Some songs were great, like Green & Blue and 117, but others were just…weird…out of place. The game looked and felt like an entirely new sci-fi shooter and not like Halo.
The multiplayer had it even worse. Loadouts were added to the game which made it so players were randomly perked, which doesn’t fit the role of an arena shooter. The lighting was terrible in PvP, and the renders on a LOT of the environments show that another year of time to make the game would’ve been welcome. Forge was upgraded, yet somewhat held back by the smaller or cluttered Forge World maps that they presented, until Forge Island was released. There was a lack of ranked playlists for about eight months. It is honestly not really much of a surprise that the player count dropped to only a few thousand online every day after about six months post launch.
As for the story? Halo 4 actually presented a well done narrative…mostly. You see, there was a lot to unpack in the game, where only 8 chapters were playable out of 10, with the first and last being just cutscenes. The ret-cons here and there were annoying to deal with, but at least the self-contained story of Halo 4 was enjoyable. Though the faults are still there. (And here is how one could fix the shortcomings of the main campaign. I highly recommend a soft-reboot to the Reclaimer Saga). But the story does fall when you consider the gross thing attached to it.
Spartan-Ops.
343 should’ve relegated Spartan-Ops to be it’s own game. A spinoff to Halo 4, utilizing the same engine. Heck, do you guys remember Halo Online? Why not have Spartan-Ops be Halo Online? It is a multiplayer-focused campaign that had a somewhat interesting story, but it was mishandled. Had the story been repurposed to be one of missions starring the actual main cast of the campaign instead of Fireteam Crimson and then have other fireteams perform small side-ops that play like the missions we received in Halo 4 Spartan-Ops, then it would mostly be a non issue. Had Halo 4’s Loadout system been used here for Spartan-Ops ONLY and not for Halo 4’s actual multiplayer, people would probably have much less of a headache.
When came to Spartan-Ops, or “Halo : Infinity” as the title-card calls it at the beginning of each of the cutscenes, it REALLY shows that Halo 4 was putting WAAAAAY too much into it’s 2-year development plan. What with the majority of missions in Spartan-Ops taking place in recycled locales from the campaign or multiplayer and taking up only one or two objectives within the small locale; each mission was essentially as long as a couple rounds of Halo 3 ODST Firefight. If 343 wanted to maintain their promise of “a new game every year”, then Halo 4 Spartan-Ops should’ve just been it’s own standalone title as a spin-off that would help bridge the story between Halo 4 and Halo 5. As a bonus, Halo Spartan Assault releasing in 2012 would’ve been a nice bonus game for players to enjoy, kinda like how when ODST and Wars released the same year.
Hindsight is 20/20 and honestly, the Reclaimer Saga needs a soft-reboot. And this is how I would recommend how to do that.