If there’s one thing Halo isn’t, it’s the same. It’s never the same from installment to installment. All games have been great in their own regard, but they’ve all been different. Sure, prior features are kept in newer installments, but the newer ones introduce newer things. Likewise, they’ve all been different but they’ve been pretty unique and original also. Granted, it’s not exactly easy to think up unique concepts in shooters anymore, but more so it just matters the arrangments, mixtures, and vicosity of said concepts and ideas that matter. Halo always had a great arrangment of these that made it original. So, to reiterate, Halo has always been original by HOW it applied gameplay concepts, not the concepts themselves.
Perhaps it was just a build up to the inevitable fall of the series. If you make all your games so different from each other, how can you expect to not have a fragmented community? Halo’s community is fragmented, seperated, a free for all, and it’s all because all the games have been different from each other. As more games are made, even more fans are alienated because it’s different from the past games, and if you keep continuing, you never really have a consistant fanbase that likes the games. Just new fans from installment to installment, which never really leads to a great constant fanbase that backs the series and devs. I’m sure there are exceptions, but when it comes to series like this you really don’t have too many fans who have been with the series the entire time. I have, well…I’m not a fan of Halo 4, but I’m still with the series.
Compare that to another series, perhaps Call of Duty. This series since about it’s fourth installment, Modern Warfare, has been pretty consistant in it’s gameplay concepts and philosophies. While even the smallest change may upset a few people just because they can’t adapt to anything they didn’t start with…for the most part, fans of the series keep liking the games. This causes the community to not be so splintered, have a much larger fan base, and generally just be a better fanbase. The game still plays how they like. Halo, does not do this.
I think the point I am trying to make is, there’s in fact something wrong with how Halo has been made and managed all along. I’ve always loved Halo up until now, but I know out of the majority, that hasn’t happened a lot. Because Halo has always been unique installment to installment, it kind of just borked itself over.
I still disagree with the direction 343i wants to take Halo in. I think, to the benefit of most of the Halo fans, bringing the style of the game back in line with the original trilogy would be the best. Original Halo fans never wanted a game with half baked features in other more generic games.
Yet, if 343i wants to make Halo thrive as much as it can under their influence, they must not change the game as much as the original Halo trilogy/Reach changed through installments. That way, fans starting with 343i’s Halo will hardly be as alienated as much and the community can start to be as good as bigger series, like Call of Duty.