Halo's Golden Age

Community General Discussion
1

When I say Halo’s Golden Age what comes to mind? For most, I think it’s the peak of Halo’s popularity on Xbox Live, starting in Halo 2, carrying on strongly into 3 and then ending when players turned away after the release of Reach.

For a lot of fans, there has been a hope with every release that Halo will come back, that it will become the king of console shooters once again. And I think many of us also want Infinite bring Halo back. We want our friends list to bustle with players playing Halo Infinite. We want Halo to be the talk of the new generation at school. But I actually don’t think it will be, and that has nothing to do with whether or not Infinite is going to be a great game.

Most of us have thoughts about why Halo’s popularity deteriorated. Some blame how different Reach was, some point to Call of Duty, some will say it’s 343’s fault for not going back to classic mechanics after the spinoff that was Reach or it’s because Halo doesn’t even look like Halo in 4 and 5. But I don’t think it’s any of these. I think the main culprit for Halo’s decline is simple: it got old, and everything that once made it feel like such a great, groundbreaking multiplayer experience became the norm. Halo’s DNA is in every single modern shooter in one way or another, it marked a true change in the genre from the arcade days of blazing-fast imprecise gunplay to the modern slowed down, surgically precise style.

Halo’s Golden age happened because at the time, it was new, it had easily accessible online features, and it was the best, and only, console fps of its caliber on the market until CoD4 finally gave it something to compete against. Going back to a classic gameplay style and art style won’t fix that. Molding the game in a way that keeps it up with modern shooter trends, like loadouts and enhanced movement, won’t fix that either. Halo is old, any comeback it does make won’t propel it back into a golden age, where it’s the top dog again. The best that it can be, is to just be Halo and be a good, or great game. It will be praised, played, make the fans happy, generate a handful of new fans, and then the next game will come out.

So don’t blame Reach, or 343, for Halo’s decline in popularity. And don’t blame Infinite when it doesn’t blow your mind like your first Halo game did. Just enjoy the game, or don’t. Get into it, or don’t. Let it be good, or bad. And keep the memories of the golden age, but accept that its not coming back.

2

As much as I agree with this, it still makes me sad. Even though I wasn’t even alive for Halo’s Gold age, I sure wish I was able to experience it. Some games just get old. 343i can’t do anything about that.

3

I think that Halo will always have a sizable dedicated fanbase. I don’t think that Halo will ever be the king of all shooters again because like you said people’s interests and preferences have changed. I think that no matter what I personally am happy that Halo is still around because to me there are very few games like it. The gameplay fills that specific arena style game for me and that’s all I really need. I think it’s ok for Halo to not be as big as it once was. As long as it remains successful and has it’s own dedicated crowd that will be enough to sustain.

4

Yep. It was a different (glorious) time.

There are just too many competing interests for a game to dominate like that. And that’s actually a good thing overall.

But there is no reason that Halo can’t rise again to be a huge player in the games industry.

5

Halo 3 was the series peak popularity.

6

I think most players would recognize that Halo’s Golden Age was from 2004-2010ish. Reach still had some momentum, but after that game, the series was never as popular as it once was.

It rose sharply with H2, peaked with H3, and declined after Reach.

7

Players never turned away at the release of Reach. It was still extremely popular a few years after launch. I’d say it was months after the release of 4 that people started to dip and interests waned.

8

I agree with the analysis above. There were so many different factors involved. No single one is the silver bullet - if it were it would be easier to fix.

You also have to consider the impact of the console generation shift from 360 to One. 360 had such huge market lead and Halo 3 was its flagship. If you bought a PS3 you had no choice but to play CoD as a shooter, but Halo 3 was truly the 360’s killer app.

Halo 4 is a puzzling one… it released only a year before the Xbox One did which I think for both 343 and Xbox was a huge mistake. Sure sales-wise it meant you had a big initial bump but given the MP issues etc. Keeping their powder dry for a launch on Xbox One may in hindsight have been the better strategy. The One lost to the PS4 badly and a lot of players were never seen again until much more recently with MCC available on PC and cloud gaming. With the exception of MCC and Halo 5 the only notable Halo release on Xbox One was Halo Wars 2 (incredible game). For a 7 year console generation we got 3 releases - one of which was all the 360 and Xbox games being re-released whereas on 360 between 2005 and 2013 we got Halo 3, ODST, Reach, Halo 4 and Halo Wars. If Halo 4 had been released on Xbox One a huge amount about the gaming landscape may be very different right now

The generational shift is also important. A lot of players of my age and older were late high school into University/College in that Halo 3-Halo Reach period. When H4 came out we were starting to lose people to real life

9

I agree with most replies. I once stated that Halo had changed forever, it was when Halo 4 released that I stated that. Too many things were changed imo. More importantly we’ve changed too. Also, there’s a section of older gamers like me that have reverted to the games we were weaned on. As far as FPS games go I was playing DOOM, Wolfenstein long before Halo.

I’ve gone back to them. I’m still interested in Halo but not as much as I used to be, in fact I have not touched Halo since a few months after Halo 5 dropped, the loot crate system was the final straw for me. I’m always hopeful Halo Infinite will turn my head again, but there’s still so many questions we need answers to. Also, there are so many other good games out there.

I’ve been playing Outriders this past week, server issues aside there’s a solid new IP there with a ton of potential for player retention moving forward. Definitely one to watch imo. I think Halo Infinite will see a huge player count initially, the free to play multiplayer will ensure that alone, add that to the game dropping on Gamepass day one and it’s more playing.

Will it retain it’s players though ? Time will tell…

10

I agree to a certain extent. It could be the best Halo game to date but I don’t think it will be as big as some are hoping. At the end of the day, the industry has changed so much since Halo’s golden era.

  1. There’s so many options now. A new mp game comes out every week when back then there were only a few good options.

  2. It’s a balanced arena game, not a BR or a class shooter. I know people here hate hearing this, but we live in the BR age, and if a game comes out that’s not a BR, it’s a class shooter. That’s just what has been and continues to dominate for years now like it or not in terms of “competitive” pvp shooters. Halo is an old genre that not many are interested in any more unfortunately.

  3. Limited platforms. Bringing it to PC and going F2P are very good moves for exposure and population. If it was xbox only again with a paywall I think we’d basically just be looking at another H5. Would be awesome if they brought it to PlayStation, opening it up to tens of millions more people but that’s not gonna happen.

11

> 2533275031939856;10:
> I agree to a certain extent. It could be the best Halo game to date but I don’t think it will be as big as some are hoping. At the end of the day, the industry has changed so much since Halo’s golden era.
>
> 1. There’s so many options now. A new mp game comes out every week when back then there were only a few good options.
>
> 2. It’s a balanced arena game, not a BR or a class shooter. I know people here hate hearing this, but we live in the BR age, and if a game comes out that’s not a BR, it’s a class shooter. That’s just what has been and continues to dominate for years now like it or not in terms of “competitive” pvp shooters. Halo is an old genre that not many are interested in any more unfortunately.
>
> 3. Limited platforms. Bringing it to PC and going F2P are very good moves for exposure and population. If it was xbox only again with a paywall I think we’d basically just be looking at another H5. Would be awesome if they brought it to PlayStation, opening it up to tens of millions more people but that’s not gonna happen.

All of this is true. Things have changed. Look at Doom Eternal. The franchise that made death match popular launched without death match.

balanced arena shooters are goin the way of the rts.

12

You’re right on some levels, though we never got a chance to grow tired of the original Halo style. Look at Call of Duty, they have released nearly the same game annually for years now. Halo changed at it’s peak, not as it was declining. Halo has to build a solid foundation at this point, which is tough to consider as every entry since Reach has been so vastly different.

13

> 2533274810177460;1:
> When I say Halo’s Golden Age what comes to mind? For most, I think it’s the peak of Halo’s popularity on Xbox Live, starting in Halo 2, carrying on strongly into 3 and then ending when players turned away after the release of Reach.
>
> For a lot of fans, there has been a hope with every release that Halo will come back, that it will become the king of console shooters once again. And I think many of us also want Infinite bring Halo back. We want our friends list to bustle with players playing Halo Infinite. We want Halo to be the talk of the new generation at school. But I actually don’t think it will be, and that has nothing to do with whether or not Infinite is going to be a great game.
>
> Most of us have thoughts about why Halo’s popularity deteriorated. Some blame how different Reach was, some point to Call of Duty, some will say it’s 343’s fault for not going back to classic mechanics after the spinoff that was Reach or it’s because Halo doesn’t even look like Halo in 4 and 5. But I don’t think it’s any of these. I think the main culprit for Halo’s decline is simple: it got old, and everything that once made it feel like such a great, groundbreaking multiplayer experience became the norm. Halo’s DNA is in every single modern shooter in one way or another, it marked a true change in the genre from the arcade days of blazing-fast imprecise gunplay to the modern slowed down, surgically precise style.
>
> Halo’s Golden age happened because at the time, it was new, it had easily accessible online features, and it was the best, and only, console fps of its caliber on the market until CoD4 finally gave it something to compete against. Going back to a classic gameplay style and art style won’t fix that. Molding the game in a way that keeps it up with modern shooter trends, like loadouts and enhanced movement, won’t fix that either. Halo is old, any comeback it does make won’t propel it back into a golden age, where it’s the top dog again. The best that it can be, is to just be Halo and be a good, or great game. It will be praised, played, make the fans happy, generate a handful of new fans, and then the next game will come out.
>
> So don’t blame Reach, or 343, for Halo’s decline in popularity. And don’t blame Infinite when it doesn’t blow your mind like your first Halo game did. Just enjoy the game, or don’t. Get into it, or don’t. Let it be good, or bad. And keep the memories of the golden age, but accept that its not coming back.

Personally I think that concerns about this are exactly why Halo has gotten worse. I think that Reach was naturally not going to have the same draw as 3, simply based on it being a prequel, but I do think that it was Halo 4 that was the nail in the coffin. I started playing on '01 with CE, and I actually really like Reach. I thought it was Bungie’s swan song to Halo, they were enjoying the freedom of not telling Chief’s story. But with Halo 4, 343 had taken over and was trying to “modernize” halo to compete with other shooters that had huge markets. I think this is really where things went south… it was trying to chase this multiplayer fanbase, and judging the game solely by the number of people playing MP, that ruined Halo. Going into Halo 5, 343 pushed even further in that direction, adding the new movement mechanics, ADS, etc., and quite simply the game lost its unique character. A game that had always been popular for a grungy, industrial, military aesthetic now looked like a power rangers cartoon. I think what they need to do is embrace the story, the aesthetic, the universe, and tell the best story they can. People will enjoy that and flock to it, but they need to start by making good Halo, not making the next warzone.

14

> 2535452737571477;2:
> As much as I agree with this, it still makes me sad. Even though I wasn’t even alive for Halo’s Gold age, I sure wish I was able to experience it. Some games just get old. 343i can’t do anything about that.

Same, I was only two. Never really got to experience the golden age, unless you count 2013 of Reach near there.

15

> 2533274810177460;1:
> When I say Halo’s Golden Age what comes to mind? For most, I think it’s the peak of Halo’s popularity on Xbox Live, starting in Halo 2, carrying on strongly into 3 and then ending when players turned away after the release of Reach.
>
> For a lot of fans, there has been a hope with every release that Halo will come back, that it will become the king of console shooters once again. And I think many of us also want Infinite bring Halo back. We want our friends list to bustle with players playing Halo Infinite. We want Halo to be the talk of the new generation at school. But I actually don’t think it will be, and that has nothing to do with whether or not Infinite is going to be a great game.
>
> Most of us have thoughts about why Halo’s popularity deteriorated. Some blame how different Reach was, some point to Call of Duty, some will say it’s 343’s fault for not going back to classic mechanics after the spinoff that was Reach or it’s because Halo doesn’t even look like Halo in 4 and 5. But I don’t think it’s any of these. I think the main culprit for Halo’s decline is simple: it got old, and everything that once made it feel like such a great, groundbreaking multiplayer experience became the norm. Halo’s DNA is in every single modern shooter in one way or another, it marked a true change in the genre from the arcade days of blazing-fast imprecise gunplay to the modern slowed down, surgically precise style.
>
> Halo’s Golden age happened because at the time, it was new, it had easily accessible online features, and it was the best, and only, console fps of its caliber on the market until CoD4 finally gave it something to compete against. Going back to a classic gameplay style and art style won’t fix that. Molding the game in a way that keeps it up with modern shooter trends, like loadouts and enhanced movement, won’t fix that either. Halo is old, any comeback it does make won’t propel it back into a golden age, where it’s the top dog again. The best that it can be, is to just be Halo and be a good, or great game. It will be praised, played, make the fans happy, generate a handful of new fans, and then the next game will come out.
>
> So don’t blame Reach, or 343, for Halo’s decline in popularity. And don’t blame Infinite when it doesn’t blow your mind like your first Halo game did. Just enjoy the game, or don’t. Get into it, or don’t. Let it be good, or bad. And keep the memories of the golden age, but accept that its not coming back.

It wasn’t 343’s fault. People tend to blame them for everything bad in Halo. they tried, and hey, look on the bright side: With the recent MCC updates, they’re starting to know what the ladies like :wink: