Halo's Current Flaws, A **Less Preachy** Stance

Games Halo 5: Guardians
#1

I’ve been lurking these forums for quite some time. I made one thread a few years back, and looking back it wasn’t great. The series stopped clicking with me after Halo 4 and I moved on, but like a lot of people the series will always hold sentimental value to me. That’s enough about me, let’s get to the topic at hand.

While people have the right to be upset about the state of Halo, they need to at least be well informed. What is the problem with Halo now? Is it 343 Industry’s fault? Will “Bungie ever come back”. Will people stop asking irrational questions? The answer is no. The problem goes deeper than the company, in fact it started in Reach with the community. When I frequented Bungie.net, tensions slowly rose and finally boiled over when Bungie left the Halo Franchise. If you’ve been watching HaloFollower (not the best source of discussion) then you’ve seen talk about the community in general. The community took sides and people either spent their time preaching about how Halo was dying, or they moved on and either kept playing or just left.

I see negativity, or at least ignorance everywhere. On Halo Streams, people in Twitch Chat always preach about how Halo has died, how Bungie needs to come back. If it’s about Halo and can be discussed, there is always negativity. You could argue that these people are just idiots, but perhaps they’re just completely rational people who are misguided. Please don’t bring that crap where it doesn’t belong, you can discuss it on the forums but it would be beating a dead horse anywhere else. I am tired of seeing it, we get it.
“-Yoink- 343”
“bungie you are so great why did u leave halo”
“rip [insert pre halo 4 title] here you were the last great title”.

Let’s look at Halo 4. Halo 4 sparked more outrage ranging from the gameplay to the story. The campaign’s difficulty is a rather important topic. If you’ve been watching Hokiebird428, you may have seen a video on this matter. The general lack of ammo, weapon variety (in situations where they would be useful) and artificial difficulty of enemies are just off the top of my head. Halo 4’s campaign takes the strategic aspect of a Halo Campaign and replaces it with monotonous gameplay elements. Promethean Knights have very little counterplay, melee mechanics are tossed out the window, enemies are practically cheating. Halo 4 has some terribly mediocre basic weapons in campaign, yet the enemies are able to abuse these weapons. In short, gameplay lacked diversity and had cheap difficulty in place of actual content. This is attributed to poor game design of course.

You can watch Hokie’s video if you want to get a more in depth explanation of this: What Went Wrong With Halo 4's Campaign - YouTube

Next is the story, oh the story. Many new elements are introduced, Master Chief has to fight a far greater threat. The story was okay, it could actually be understood through gameplay rather than just cutscenes. It felt very anticlimactic at the end where the quicktime event killed the mood. After Chief was found in space again, he stood there brooding and talked about whether he was man or machine. This truly sparked my interest, it set up concepts that could have been explored in Halo 5, but that’s my next gripe.

As you know, Halo 5’s story was completely tossed out the window. This was due to marketing reasons. 343 Industries is not licensed, Microsoft OWNS THEM (VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW). If 343i actually had a good story planned, Microsoft didn’t think so. They completely turned the story around, all the trailers were now a partial lie and the community has yet another reason to boil over. Bungie’s team was licensed, they told Microsoft to back off with their bullcrap, that’s how they kept their games solid. The point is that you cannot direct all your blame on a single group, in Halo’s case you have to realize that both 343 Industries and their OWNER Microsoft made their fair share of mistakes. All the new lore in the Halo Saga is very disjointed, this is due to the lack of immediate information outside the game. Lots of poor choices being made.

The community is very fickle at times, but it’s simply due to the fact that lots of people don’t actually have their own opinions. Reach was highly debated at launch, but slowly it was better received by the community 6 years later. Wow, almost 6 years since Reach. Time flies by quickly. It’s alot easier to remember the goods than it is to remember the bads in Reach with all that time. The community being fickle is also ill-informed, or just too belligerent of other people’s opinion. I just want people to have a good understanding of the problem before they go out to make their claims or in case they go out of their way to get into an idiotic argument.

Thanks for reading, please feel open to discuss.

#2

Not to be negative or anything, but your wisdom is likely wasted here. Good read though.

#3

All I can say is that I read and watch peoples’ criticisms of this game all the time, and in almost every instance I can cite an older version of Halo, usually an original trilogy title, that made the same mistake, or had the same problem, or that was the genesis of the thing that would blossom into “the problem” in a later title. People view the past through a fog of nostalgia, fondly remembering the early Halos as a stand-in for everything that made their high school years bearable. They also live in a world of hyperbole and absurd exageration where a mildly annoying feature becomes game-breaking in less time than it takes to write a vitriolic hate thread on an internet forum.

I’m all in favor of people having opinions. Goodness knows I have more than a few of my own. But if I do anything differently, it’s that I try to remember that when I dislike something it’s usually a random and arbitrary and personal dislike. I give myself leave to dislike the things I dislike, but I hardly expect anyone else to care, much less expect the developer to change the game for my personal benefit. And the last thing on earth that makes a gripe more legitimate is the claim that older Halos did it better.

#4

> 2533274826434697;2:
> Not to be negative or anything, but your wisdom is likely wasted here. Good read though.

It’s good enough to know that there are some who understand my gripe. Again, thanks for reading.

#5

You’re calling us “ill-informed” and “ignorant”, but you seem to be the one that doesn’t realize when people talk about “Halo dying”, they’re usually referring to the MP rather than the Campaign.

#6

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> You’re calling us “ill-informed” and “ignorant”, but you seem to be the one that doesn’t realize when people talk about “Halo dying”, they’re usually referring to the MP rather than the Campaign.

Well I’m not one to generalize, you need to understand that I am not calling everyone ignorant, but multiplayer is not the point. I haven’t played enough Halo 4 multiplayer, nor do I plan on playing Halo 5’s multiplayer. I really don’t have a stance on that. Something important to understand is that the problem extends deeper than just the multiplayer. You have to look at all aspects of the game or rather look into the entire saga itself, and you can’t speak for everyone on whether they’re only referring to MP, that’s a given. Emphasis on “Less Preachy”.

#7

> 2533274900055796;6:
> > 2533274819567236;5:
> > You’re calling us “ill-informed” and “ignorant”, but you seem to be the one that doesn’t realize when people talk about “Halo dying”, they’re usually referring to the MP rather than the Campaign.
>
>
> Well I’m not one to generalize, you need to understand that I am not calling everyone ignorant, but multiplayer is not the point. I haven’t played enough Halo 4 multiplayer, nor do I plan on playing Halo 5’s multiplayer. I really don’t have a stance on that. Something important to understand is that the problem extends deeper than just the multiplayer. You have to look at all aspects of the game, and you can’t speak for everyone on whether they’re only referring to MP, that’s a given.

I’m just letting you know that MP is largely what people are talking about when they say “Halo is dying”, whether is extends deeper than that or not. I’ve been on multiple forums for years while people talk about this issue, so I know exactly that the argument is about, whereas it doesn’t sound like you’ve been lurking long enough to know.

#8

> 2533274819567236;7:
> > 2533274900055796;6:
> > > 2533274819567236;5:
> > > You’re calling us “ill-informed” and “ignorant”, but you seem to be the one that doesn’t realize when people talk about “Halo dying”, they’re usually referring to the MP rather than the Campaign.
> >
> >
> > Well I’m not one to generalize, you need to understand that I am not calling everyone ignorant, but multiplayer is not the point. I haven’t played enough Halo 4 multiplayer, nor do I plan on playing Halo 5’s multiplayer. I really don’t have a stance on that. Something important to understand is that the problem extends deeper than just the multiplayer. You have to look at all aspects of the game, and you can’t speak for everyone on whether they’re only referring to MP, that’s a given.
>
>
> I’m just letting you know that MP is largely what people are talking about when they say “Halo is dying”, whether is extends deeper than that or not. I’ve been on multiple forums for years while people talk about this issue, so I know exactly that the argument is about, whereas it doesn’t sound like you’ve been lurking long enough to know.

Thanks for clearing that up. Yeah I haven’t lurked this GD long enough, but aren’t you open to something other than just multiplayer? I’d like to hear what you think. Sorry if I’m inconveniencing you.

#9

> 2533274900055796;8:
> > 2533274819567236;7:
> > > 2533274900055796;6:
> > > > 2533274819567236;5:
> > > > You’re calling us “ill-informed” and “ignorant”, but you seem to be the one that doesn’t realize when people talk about “Halo dying”, they’re usually referring to the MP rather than the Campaign.
> > >
> > >
> > > Well I’m not one to generalize, you need to understand that I am not calling everyone ignorant, but multiplayer is not the point. I haven’t played enough Halo 4 multiplayer, nor do I plan on playing Halo 5’s multiplayer. I really don’t have a stance on that. Something important to understand is that the problem extends deeper than just the multiplayer. You have to look at all aspects of the game, and you can’t speak for everyone on whether they’re only referring to MP, that’s a given.
> >
> >
> > I’m just letting you know that MP is largely what people are talking about when they say “Halo is dying”, whether is extends deeper than that or not. I’ve been on multiple forums for years while people talk about this issue, so I know exactly that the argument is about, whereas it doesn’t sound like you’ve been lurking long enough to know.
>
>
> Thanks for clearing that up. Yeah I haven’t lurked this GD long enough, but aren’t you open to something other than just multiplayer? I’d like to hear what you think.

I am interested in the Campaigns, but that’s usually a one and done (with a few replays depending on Campaign features like scoring and co-op), whereas the MP is what keeps people playing for a long time, so when that’s not good people will make a bigger stink about it.