The majority of players seem to think that Halo 4 was lacking in the multiplayer and some even think that it was lacking story-wise.
The astounding drop in daily players, especially the low amount of people playing the recently released map packs seem to agree with the “bad” multiplayer. Also the game has gotten stunning price drops in the past few months, the game hasn’t even been out for half a year. In January the game was available for $40 and Best Buy will be selling it for a low price of $20. This could show that the game truly is doing poorly in terms of sales of dedicated players and sales. Microsoft is having a hard time trying to compete with other AAA titles. Halo is their best Xbox exclusive and they are trying to hold on to it.
Then the campaign was rushed, bosses were scrapped, the covenant got a re-design, the main antagonist performed poorly to some, and then the terminal videos weren’t included in the gameplay and had to be streamed. Many cutscenes were unclear to the player and there is a big gap of information missing between the Chief’s hibernation and his return. Players who haven’t read the books or haven’t seen theories from other intellectuals may have suffered from some big-time confusion while playing the game.
Now, let’s go over why Halo 4 had wasted potential. Not many Bungie employees remained on the 343i team. So things such as monk chants and other nostalgic tracks were hard to incorporate into the game without re-using sounds or remastering the old. 343i was a small company and Halo 4 was their first big game. Of course they were excited and may have overlooked a few things. There time to redeem themselves will come. Reality has hit them hard and they have a better sense of what it takes to compete with other games. Halo’s most well-known and biggest competitor, CoD had more amazing sales within it’s first week. Another reason why Halo 4 may have done so poorly was because of the failure to open a public beta. Imagine how much worse it may have been if beta versions of the game weren’t shown at gaming events; E3, Euro, PAX
Microsoft made the mistake of focusing too much on petty Halo 4 merchandise, the profits don’t seem to have been put towards improving the game. Then 343i were determined to make Halo 4’s graphics seem amazing. Graphics are nice, but when a game comes out 2 years after a recent title, they are bound to. There’s little to no point in putting so much time and effort into the graphic design of the game. Great games of the Olden Days were not founded on graphics alone, but gameplay, replay-ability, and how addictive and fun they were. If a game can’t keep a player’s interest, then it has failed. As a personal opinion I prefer the grittier spartan models of Halo 2 and Halo: Reach. Gives off a better sense of experiencing a war, something that CoD has definitely done right whether or not the graphics engine is improved drastically. People will stop reading because I mentioned CoD so often, but I must say. I find it ironic how the same people who say CoD is bad because the graphics are always the same are usually the same people who think good games aren’t founded on graphics.
Another thing that crushed Halo 4’s sales was the large amount of useless, digital DLC, and inability to compensate LE purchasers for technical goof-ups and issues in which the company was at fault. Let’s not forget that 343i pulled some political moves and failed to deliver some promises. In order to appeal to nostalgic gamers, 343i stated that there will be a classic playlist. Such a playlist is yet to be implemented in the game. Thus, such prolonging of something that will appeal to a large majority of the fanbase was sure to be a deterrent for those very players. The modifications to the game itself were already too drastic and felt forced upon the player. Custom Loadouts, sprinting ability, armor mods, support and tactical upgrades. Many players were not prepared to conform to such a playstyle. Modifications to a series must be made in order to compete with modern games. This is known by all players, but do not change the game to the point where it doesn’t feel like the game that people have played for years. Halo 4 did have the best launch day sales out of the series, but eventually a giant hole formed in the net that Microsoft made and many players were able to escape through that hole.
These things give little hope for the game’s sales and DLC. Halo 4 was clearly rushed, but Halo 5 has to be better, right?
However, the table for Halo 5 is already set. The engine is there, the mechanics need a few tweaking, the characters, vehicles, weapons have been established. The graphics will even get a nice shine on the next-gen console. Feedback from the community after seeing what happened to Halo 4 will be a wake up call for Microsoft and maybe even make 343i employees more determined. Halo 4 was a big step and was bound to drive away many players, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t also bring in an influx of new players as well.
Halo 5 will be better in my opinion. Many players have given up on Halo after this game, or even after Reach. Hopefully 343i will learn from their mistakes and revise their actions to better their future products. Halo 5 is going to be the darkest Halo game. Of course that means there will be a death, also know that 343i may not be afraid to give Chief a “hero’s death”. We can only hope and speculate. Neil’s darkest track is “Immaterial”, I trust that he will provide us with other dark and emotional tracks to set the mood. Perhaps the music will be properly distributed throughout the campaign, contrary to how it was in Halo 4. Many beautiful tracks weren’t given their chance to shine to make way for actiony tracks which was a let down. Remember, many MLG Pros such as Bravo have been giving tips and ways to improve the multiplayer experience that 343i devs are surely listening to. Now that all of the petty things are out of the way, 343i could be done with Halo 5 much faster. Hopefully they don’t pull a Treyarch and try to release it too early, they should stick to the 3-year release span with this trilogy. It’ll give the ample time to get new voice actors, make some original changes, and implement ideas that they may have acquired within those 3 years.
Halo 5 will look amazing in comparison to Halo 4. I’ll know 343i has done an amazing job if Halo 5 can replace Halo 2 as my favorite Halo game.