That is good so long as the devs still follow the Golden Rule of Game Design :
“If you are making a sequel to a great game, merely upgrade it but not change it. If you are making a spin-off, then you may utilize experimental designs so long as the core soul of the work is intact.”
I’m not sure if I’m being honest. Seeing how modular Infinite seems to be (alluding to) it seems like in time it can encompass many overarching gameplay tropes that extend between Halo 3/Reach as well as Halo 5, essentially making a game that can fit into the broader Halo fan spectrum without taking away from one camp to benefit the other.
I’m not sure how F2P is the reason for the way the gameplay works. Could you explain your reasoning a bit further?
I can’t say for certain, but if Forge is included as part of the multiplayer suite as it seems to be then a custom game settings overhaul could really elevate this title to something uniquely special in the F2P market.
It’s not a “Golden Rule” if you just made it up. I can’t find it anywhere.
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The Golden Rule is an unspoken one, because it is common sense.
Take a look at any other game series. Their sequels are all upgrades to the predecessor. Spin-offs are where the games deviate from their norms while still having a semblance of the original hidden within.
Look at Mario.
Nintendo still makes his games side-scrollers and they sell pretty well.
Yet we still get games like Super Mario 64, Super Mario RPG, Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Mario Party, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy, etc.
Another example is Call of Duty.
Currently there are four types of CoD games :
- WWII era games
- Cold War Era games
- Modern Era Games
- Futuristic Era Games.
Each play the same at their core, but loadouts and mobility change depending on which era games you are playing.
The Crysis series also follows this, with Crysis 1-thru-3 all being basically the same game, just upgraded version of each other.
But Warface isn’t called Crysis 4 despite it having many of the design elements of the original three. It has too much experimental gameplay differences to account for, so they gave it a different name. They could have called it Crysis Online and people would still be upset.
Imagine if Halo Wars was called Halo 4 instead.
Or if Dead Space Extraction was called Dead Space 2.
Or if Gears Tactics was called Gears of War 6?
Or if Metroid Prime was called Super Metroid 2?
Adding the number to the end of your game’s title gives people the expectations that it will be a direct follow-up of the original; and thus they will have the original designs in mind and be expecting an upgraded version of it; not a complete alteration of it.
Halo CE to Halo 2 introduced -
- Enhanced customization
- Dual-Wielding
- Vehicle Boarding
- More Weapons and Vehicles
Halo 2 to Halo 3 introduced -
- Further Enhanced Customization
- More Weapons and Vehicles
- Equipment
- Forge Mode
Halo 3 ODST, Halo Wars, and Halo Reach were spin-offs, and thus were allowed to be excessively different if need be. ODST was hardly changed from Halo 3 whereas Halo Reach overhauled the system compared to Halo 3.
But Halo 4 and Halo 5 broke the rule. They changed the art style, enemy A.I., the weapons sandbox was heavily nerfed to become unenjoyable in Halo 4 (which they rectified in Halo 5 Guardians), and a slew of other design choices that alienated long-time fans.
When you already have a large group of people willing to give you money for what they want, but then you change the product into something else; they will be annoyed and turn away. It is why Halo 4’s player base dropped to around 20,000 dedicated players after a year. We were promised Halo, but instead got a hodge-podge of other games mixed into it and making the game something entirely different.
Imagine if you will you are wanting to buy the newest model of Xbox, only Microsoft made the decision to try and steal some fan-boys from Playstation by making the Xbox more like a Playstation? So as a result, the UI is more like Playstation and the controller even moved its buttons and joysticks.
Or if the next season of your favorite sci-fi series decided to be set entirely in the 1920s for the entirety of 24 episodes? So no longer did you get the cool space-battles and high-tech, you got the Great Depression and industrial Dieselpunk?
That is basically what happened to Halo in a nutshell.
The designers followed the trend of the 2010s where new people took over the franchise and said “Its cool and all, but lets shove a little bit of this in here for no good reason.”
Which of course, led to a lot of people feeling cheated and avoiding the franchise they so loved.
A “rule” that you’ve quoted, attributed to no one, that’s apparently “unspoken” on top of that. Are these phrases you’ve created yourself, decorated with italics and quotation marks to give them more weight or something? Because then you’re either misusing them, or giving yourself too much credit, or both. If it’s a “Golden Rule”, then you wouldn’t be the only one saying it and it would be easy to find elsewhere. If it were “common sense”, as you’ve put it, people would still talk about it regardless.
Given your penchant for veering waaaay off-topic, I’m not inclined to discuss this. Walls of text are the opposite of persuasive because it’s too much to process.
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Totally agree. I played H4 all the way up to Infinite’s release, and am probably going to go back.
H4 is the greatest FPS ever made. Regardless of if you think it is a good “Halo” game (it most definitely is, imo) it is, in a vacuum, the greatest FPS ever.
No other game to this day can match the snappy, crisp and satisfying action it brings. Everything about it is perfectly tuned and on point. Infinite is so slow, sloppy, repetitive, and just generally unfun by comparison.
In H4, the sandbox is diverse, loadouts add strategy and variety, even the graphics are still gorgeous to this day.
Why 343 decided not to keep expanding on H4 while keeping a side of same starts for the classic crowd I’ll never understand.
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Can you name one franchise that has broken my supposed rule without making its fanbase super angry or causing the company to be collapsed?
- Dead Space 3 broke the rule with how it changed the gameplay, and Visceral Games got canned.
- Command & Conquer became less of an RTS strategy game about battlefield control and more of an RTS game of attrition to protect your mobile base that was now irreplacable, and as a result; no games have come out since Command & Conquer 4 - Tiberian Twilight.
In fact, this Golden Rule doesn’t just apply to videogames. How many movie franchises or TV series have been ruined because they decided to veer off and do something entirely different from the previous chapters?
Take a look at The Legend of Korra that followed up Avatar The Last Airbender.
100 years pass and all of a sudden 1920s America popped up out of nowhere in a world setting that was built up off of Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, and Native American-inspired cultures.
Quotes have to start off somewhere and in order to be quotable, there has to be a wisdom or truth to them.
Yes, I made defined what The Golden Rule should be. And why is it the Golden Rule?
Because if you follow it, you will maintain a successful brand that has little discourse on the forums.
And yet whenever I log into Halo Waypoint, all I see is discourse caused by unnecessary alterations that have divided the fanbase down a spider-web fracture of “What Halo really is.”
Had Halo 4 simply just upgraded the graphics but kept Halo 3’s art style and had a better weapons sandbox balance without loadouts, the game would have been considered a proper success and be held on a pedestal like with Halo CE thru 3.
Had 343 had any initial respect of the Intellectual Property that they inherited from Bungie, it is likely we wouldn’t be in as large of a mess with Halo Infinite. And yet, here we are. Hindsight is 20/20 and Halo 4 was the first in a line of failures.
Oddly enough the ratings for the spin-offs that have released since 343 took over the franchise outshine the ratings of the mainline games.
Again, the Golden Rule is a rule practiced by most other brands that understand that change to an IP should be subtle, and if you want to test the waters; release a spin-off that will experiment with a gameplay concept you might want to use in a future title.
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The issue is that you’re basing your reasoning on a quote attributed to no one, and because it’s attributed to no one, it’s actually attributed to you. That being the apparent case, means it’s an opinion of yours that you’ve labelled to instill some kind of intrinsic worth to what you say, beyond having any of it’s own merit.
This makes one of my theories correct: you give yourself too much credit.
It’s no “Golden Rule”, it’s your opinion wearing the feathers of a peacock.
To save some thinking, I’m not inclined to listen to your points because you come off as proud and ostentatious.
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infinite is great in graphics , sound design physics what makes halo 4 modern ? bruh yall just hate oon the the newest game
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All quotes are opinions.
People just parrot them to make themselves sound profound and wise, often out of context of the true meaning meant by the one who said the original quote.
As for it being an opinion I would have to disagree.
Opinions can be argued and changed.
But this is clearly a fact. Because had Halo or Dead Space or Mass Effect followed this rule; we would not have such a divided fanbase in the Halo franchise.
Visceral would not have been liquidated for the failure of Dead Space 3.
BioWare Montreal would not have been closed had Mass Effect Andromeda actually been a likable game.
I call it a Golden Rule because it has value that everyone would want to possess.
Yes I may come off as pretentious, but the fact still remains that extreme changes to a mainline series are almost always unwelcome changes.
Again, if we look at the dedicated player count of Halo 3 one-year post launch and compare it to Halo 4, it is a no-contest of which one was far more well received by the fans of the series.
- Halo 3 averaged ~270,000 dedicated players daily.
- Halo 4 averaged ~20,000 dedicated players daily.
The numbers speak for itself.
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I hope one day you are humbled.
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I hope one day you can see.
Perhaps it will happen when you too become invested in a franchise over the course of a decade, only to have a sudden change in direction that leaves a sour taste in your desire for entertainment. I have tasted it once before. And it is why I avoided watching Game of Thrones to avoid it again.
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I’ve been here since '02.
I have about as much punditry on the topic of Halo as anybody else, maybe even more.
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They kinda put themselves in. A position of having to monetize the players basically they have to get you buy stuff, and on a constant flow of it.
They pissed off the player base with that decision to only have progression tied to the Battlepass, and XP earnable only through challenges.
Obviously they added per match XP, but the major focus is make challenges the Bulk of XP source… Thus players are more likely to run into challenges they want to swap. This is to push the player at some point to the Shop, but they want to do it over and over and over…
The fact that no one really like it has 343 trying to balance making the game profitable and still not pulling scummy moves…
What was my dead givaway of desperation was when I. Noticed we only got 10 of the 60 default colors we had in 5… And they are trying to sell us the rest, not once but three times on e per core.
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I have been a dedicated fan since 2003.
I have collected every game, every book.
Halo was my favorite reality to escape to when our own was boring.
And then that reality was altered and twisted by those who misunderstood the franchise and its meanings.
Though Halo 4 was a good and compelling narrative, it stood upon excessive ret-cons to make it so.
And then the gameplay was a whole other field of change that made the game less of enjoyment and more of a repetitive chore.
This wasn’t a subtle change.
It was a wrong change.
I suppose you think I “misunderstand the franchise” too?
Well, your opinion means very little to me. Your thoughts are not essential to my experience with the franchise, and you should recognize that this also refers to literally everybody but yourself.
So, don’t give yourself too much credit.
From my perspective, having consumed Halo for two decades now, Halo’s changes have always been relatively progressive with a few spikes here and there, but they’ve never been so outlandish that I felt bothered.
No “wrong changes”, just changes.
Moreover, your thoughts aren’t compelling enough for me to continue, so I’m leaving this behind.
No I do not.
I do not yet know what you think of the story modes of Halo 4 and Halo 5.
I do not yet know how you feel about the ret-cons 343 had made to allow for their alterations to the series to pass.
So I cannot really make an opinion on that without it being arrogant and wrongful.
I’m disagreeing with the OP as much as most others, but this without any sort of allowance for outliers will always be true.
I can assure you that the changes between Halo 2 and Halo CE did make a subset part of the community super angry.
Fully rechargable health, which was also hidden on the HUD, Dual Wielding, No AR, hijacking vehicles.
Some didn’t see eye to eye with H3’s equipment either.
You’ll always find a group in a community utterly furious with how a new game is made.
This is the literal definition of what a quote is:
repeat or copy out (words from a text or speech written or spoken by another person).
It can be anything, because it is anything another person said.
Rules, opinions, facts, gibberish, stories, inspirational speeches.
Quotes start with people saying something, then someone else quotes them. There need be no “wisdom or truth” behind them.
Let me quote my five year old as he scored a goal yesterday when we went ice skating: “CHECKMATE!”
There, the only thing required with a quote is that it is true to its origin, word for word, and in text you basically also copy spelling errors.
You can’t just “start” a quote.
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that 343 has put out yes, overall no tho i did like plaza, coli. and the rig in h5.
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Granted yes, but usually it is a small rift.
Whereas the changes in Halo 4 tore the fandom into two separate definitive groups.
Yes you can quote someone on anything. But most regard it as nonsense unless the quote had an actual meaning to it. A 5 year old saying Checkmate while scoring a goal ice skating is just cute and loveable.
But the reason people quote others is because they respect the ideology and logic of the idea it represents. And sometimes people misinterpret the quotes they hear because they lack the context of who said it.
“If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight!” ~Sun Tzu
Now what is the context of this quote? A conquerer who wants to rule over more lands and make his legend known? Or a rebellion overthrowing a tyrant and they use this as their call-to-arms?
And that isn’t even the full quote, as often people don’t even cite the full quotes of anyone.
“If fighting is sure to result in victory, than you must fight , even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler’s bidding.”
The true context of Sun Tzu’s wisdom here is you must evaluate your odds, pick-&-choose your battles; even when those around you or above you declare otherwise.
You certainly can start a quote.
And if others heed its wisdom, it will continue to be quoted.