Since Halo is going with the games as a service approach with Halo Infinite do you think we are going to see campaign expansions more frequently or do you expect the usual 3 year cycle?
Every couple of years maybe?
Maybe a mission every 3-6 months.
Once or twice a year, maybe
my worry is the bulk of it would be about as complex as a Spartan ops mission, i.e. “go to Point A, kill some dudes, go to point B, activate a Thing, go to Point C and extract.”
I know they’ve tease a story for personal Spartans, so I hope we end up getting something with a bit of depth
I hope they do add some nice DLC, maybe even some different story arcs of different characters
I’m thinking they’re going to do like Bungie, and release story content once a year.
Once a year if we’re lucky.
> 2535449887501541;6:
> I’m thinking they’re going to do like Bungie, and release story content once a year.
Destiny also does a seasonal story arc equivalent to 2 or 3 story missions and a horde mode type activity with each seasons battlepass and all that goes with that approx every 3 months on top of the yearly dlc drop
Aroind 800 staff so the output is quite impressive I’d expect 343 if they are pricing and pacing the seasons at a similar cadence to output quality content around that level
.now it’s a live service the constant desire for regular new quality contant is an expectation they will have to meet .when I say contant I’m not talking cosmetics as that isn’t content .
I don’t think it will end up being as much of an ongoing service as they’re claiming. I can count on my fingers the number of established AAA series that claimed the next game was going to move to a long lifespan with constant updates for years to come and actually stuck to it. Fewer still actually managed to do it for multiplayer and singleplayer.
> 2535449887501541;6:
> I’m thinking they’re going to do like Bungie, and release story content once a year.
Should be decent proper singleplayer content though since infinite will not be a mmo.
> 2533274848539555;9:
> I don’t think it will end up being as much of an ongoing service as they’re claiming. I can count on my fingers the number of established AAA series that claimed the next game was going to move to a long lifespan with constant updates for years to come and actually stuck to it. Fewer still actually managed to do it for multiplayer and singleplayer.
I don’t disagree , but this is 343s messaging about the 10 year plan . We’ve heard it all before many times but we will see if they can pull it off or not . They’ve got big daddy MS money so if any company has the resources it’s 343
just doing a level here and there isn’t the way to do it at all.
What i think they will do is something more in line with how they release the books.
So we’re getting infinite which is the platform for everything halo going fwrd. much like halo MCC is with older halo games.
So like every year we can get like side stories in the halo universe under the infinite umbrella. Could be small stories following blue team, or some odsts who are somewhere else on Zeta halo. Have them be complete small stories 4-5 levels with a start , middle end , wrapped up nice. Then ofc over 3-4 years we can get a new main story continuation which is like another full game. That way people dont have non stop cliff hangers with annoying half finished content. You have nice bite size stories inbetween main games that actually finish. They can use that to really extend the halo universe for the first time for gamers , much likes its already done for those who read all the new books.
Imagine dlc marketed like the books, so we get uncoming dlc " enter name of story" In this story we follow s3s on the planet below Zeta halo to uncover ancient secrets" ext. contained mini story, that just adds onto infinite, and in a way enhances it. They could also use it to fill in the blanks for those who just play the games. Imagine if they did this with halo 4 for example, a mini story for the Didact, to actually show how good a character he is / was.
Overall its a perfect way to fix the biggest issue halo has right now, which is linking books with games, filling in the blanks for those who don’t have the time to read so many books, and extending the universe for all.
I’d Imgine story content to drop yearly with some smaller dlcs and coop stuff 2 or 3 times a year.
I imagine that the full-game size main Campaign expansions will drop every 2 years. Given that MP won’t be factoring into the dev time, and engine improvements will probably just be graphical, they could shave a year off of the usual 3 year cycle.
However, it would be nice if on the ‘off’ years, we got a small sized campaign, maybe with a different playable character, that reuses the previous maps in new ways, and potentially expanded areas.
I wouldn’t want 343 to try and drop a full sized game every holiday season, ala Destiny, for fear that they would feel half baked and underwhelming compared to ‘year one’ content. If that makes sense?
I want the main entry expansions to feel like true successors to each previous entry as a valid game in its own right, rather than feeling like mediocre DLC while the next game is being developed.
Who knows, if the replayability value is high enough, and that combined with the seasonal story content it looks like we might be getting, we might be kept busy enough to wait 2 years?
> 2535406126289417;11:
> > 2533274848539555;9:
> > I don’t think it will end up being as much of an ongoing service as they’re claiming. I can count on my fingers the number of established AAA series that claimed the next game was going to move to a long lifespan with constant updates for years to come and actually stuck to it. Fewer still actually managed to do it for multiplayer and singleplayer.
>
> I don’t disagree , but this is 343s messaging about the 10 year plan . We’ve heard it all before many times but we will see if they can pull it off or not . They’ve got big daddy MS money so if any company has the resources it’s 343
I’m pretty sure they said similar things about Halo 4 and 5. Remember when Spartan Ops was going to be an ongoing project? They’ll ultimately make the decision as to what kind of support it gets once its out and they make a business case for whatever will bring in the most revenue.
> 2533274810945725;14:
> I imagine that the full-game size main Campaign expansions will drop every 2 years. Given that MP won’t be factoring into the dev time, and engine improvements will probably just be graphical, they could shave a year off of the usual 3 year cycle.
>
> However, it would be nice if on the ‘off’ years, we got a small sized campaign, maybe with a different playable character, that reuses the previous maps in new ways, and potentially expanded areas.
>
> I wouldn’t want 343 to try and drop a full sized game every holiday season, ala Destiny, for fear that they would feel half baked and underwhelming compared to ‘year one’ content. If that makes sense?
> I want the main entry expansions to feel like true successors to each previous entry as a valid game in its own right, rather than feeling like mediocre DLC while the next game is being developed.
>
> Who knows, if the replayability value is high enough, and that combined with the seasonal story content it looks like we might be getting, we might be kept busy enough to wait 2 years?
I like your thinking , I guess it will come down to how effecient the new slipspace engibe is as well .
> 2555390681439134;12:
> just doing a level here and there isn’t the way to do it at all.
> What i think they will do is something more in line with how they release the books.
> So we’re getting infinite which is the platform for everything halo going fwrd. much like halo MCC is with older halo games.
> So like every year we can get like side stories in the halo universe under the infinite umbrella. Could be small stories following blue team, or some odsts who are somewhere else on Zeta halo. Have them be complete small stories 4-5 levels with a start , middle end , wrapped up nice. Then ofc over 3-4 years we can get a new main story continuation which is like another full game. That way people dont have non stop cliff hangers with annoying half finished content. You have nice bite size stories inbetween main games that actually finish. They can use that to really extend the halo universe for the first time for gamers , much likes its already done for those who read all the new books.
>
> Imagine dlc marketed like the books, so we get uncoming dlc " enter name of story" In this story we follow s3s on the planet below Zeta halo to uncover ancient secrets" ext. contained mini story, that just adds onto infinite, and in a way enhances it. They could also use it to fill in the blanks for those who just play the games. Imagine if they did this with halo 4 for example, a mini story for the Didact, to actually show how good a character he is / was.
> Overall its a perfect way to fix the biggest issue halo has right now, which is linking books with games, filling in the blanks for those who don’t have the time to read so many books, and extending the universe for all.
This is exactly how I hope they handle it. I think one of the biggest challenges Guardians had was implementing a whole new set of characters all at once. For all the new characters on Osiris, blue team showing up in game for the first time, and the warden eternal, how much time did we really spend getting to know them as characters and not just exposition machines? I’d love it if we had mini-DLCs exploring side characters that could then be incorporated into the main Chief-focused campaign add-one. I think that would be a lot less jarring.
I think we will get a small set of missions (maybe just one or two) after the first three months. These are likely already being worked on. I expect by next summer/fall we will have a substantial campaign DLC release. After that, it is going to be a similar pattern of small updates leading up to the occasional large drop. Expect it to be on the same schedule as seasons, but not as often. So every 3 months we get a multiplayer season, and every 2 or 3 seasons we get a campaign update.
I would think we would get something every three months with the MP cycles. It doesn’t have to be a full campaign extension. Just another mission - maybe using a different character… or a remake of a mission from an older game. Just keep the content dribbling in between major drops (every year or two).
If it’s like Destiny’s model, I predict small, Spartan Ops-esque dlc every 6 months. With a big campaign DLC every other year. The former maybe dealing with your Spartan, the latter continues Chief’s story.