343’s work on Halo is pretty bad compared to Bungie’s work with Halo. If you can’t honestly see that then you weren’t around from the start. Not many people were. I’ve played and been obsessed with everything Halo related since Combat Evolve’s release back in 2001. I have never jumped ship and never stopped playing. Bungie raised the bar higher and higher for their competition with every new Halo release.
-Halo CE laid the ground work for multiplayer.
-Halo 2 had an incredible Multiplayer experience with both Rank and Unranked Playlists, a Clan system, Friend’s List which Xbox Live didn’t have at the time, and DLC Maps (Downloadable Content) that were release on Xbox Live first then via retail disk. Those were maps that were fresh and new, not the kind of crap we see in Halo 5 where you have one map then the same thing with a different time of day and a few things moved around.
-Halo 3 was what set the standard for the future of Halo. Equipment was added to multiplayer like Bubble Shields and Regeneration fields. 4 Player Co-op over Xbox Live was introduced and Halo 3 introduced Forge Mode which allowed players to build their own maps and gametypes. Forge also lead to some of the most incredible Player Created Content that the Halo Community has ever seen. Halo 3 also introduced Theater Mode which allowed players to go back into games to analyze everything from any point of view from a recent game or to go back and take breathtaking screenshots of their work in Forge or a crazy moment from a previous game. Keep in mind, Halo 5 didn’t have Forge shipped, it was later added as “DLC”. Halo 5 does have a theater mode but you can’t take screenshots or gameclips, you have to go through your Kinect to do so. Oh by the way, Halo 3 also had a Beta Test which no other console game had ever done.
-Halo ODST introduced Firefight which was an incredible addition and sparked spin-offs from their competition: Gears of War’s “Horde” Mode and Call of Duty’s “Zombies” Mode. ODST also showed fans what it was like to be an ODST, not the indestructible Spartan that we all love to play as. It had an incredible story and it was refreshing to see something new.
-Halo Reach was a great title that showed the what happened before the events of Halo CE and introduced us to Armor abilities which were hit or miss with fans. The degree of customization was amazing! We’ve never been able to go into depth and make our Spartans…unique. The armor abilities was a new addition that wasn’t a huge success but definitely made games more interesting and unpredictable. Invasion was a fun new gametype along with Generator Defense though they didn’t really catch I think as well as Bungie hoped. The game really wasn’t well suited to competitive MLG gameplay but that wasn’t a huge deal seeing as Bungie didn’t make Halo games built around competitive ESports, they built what they thought would be fun, exciting, and addictive to ALL players. Yes the competitive aspect was there such as dedicated Ranked MLG or Team Hardcore Playlists but 90% of the playlists were for the dedicated and casual players. Ranked playlists for those who craved competitive play and Unranked/Social Playlists for those who just want to play and have fun.
The BIGGEST about Bungie with their Halo games was that they were deeply connected with their community. They were always sharing clips and screenshots during their Weekly Updates and Online File Share. They frequently had Community Playdates where you could play with members of Bungie. Often had Q/A with fans. They were always on the forums reading and responding to posts. They had the best trailers for upcoming content. They always knew how to set the bar higher and to keep their loving fans coming back again and again to continue playing their incredible games.
343 Industries has done some good work with the campaign side of things but almost completely centering the multiplayer experience around Competitive ESports has really turned away a big part of the Halo Player Population. The only thing that keeps players coming back is free content. Yea sure, free Pizza Assault Rifle Weapon skins and more armor pieces to add to the collection of nearly 300 helmets and armor types is cool but do you want quantity over quality? Bungie never wasted time on free stuff. They worked on great new maps and gave us the opportunity for new Armor but you had to work for it. Wanted Recon Armor in Halo 3? You had to earn the Vidmaster Achievements. Wanted the Hayabusa and Katana in Halo 3? Had to collect all the skulls including the IWHBYD skull. They didn’t overwhelm us with more choices than we knew what to do with but they gave us just enough to make each player special. For those who worked a little harder or went a little further to earn that armor that no one else had yet…those guy’s stood out. You can’t tell whats what in Halo 5 because there’s so much to pick from.
This is just my opinion and I don’t expect many of you to see that since most of you are newer players. If you had been a fan since the start of the Halo series. Thorough played all the games, shared all the hype around the trailers, experiences all the multiplayer ups and downs, went through all the frustrating Legendary Campaign Runs, achieved or attempted to achieve many of the achievements over the games. If you went through all that with Bungie and the beginning of the Halo series, you’d see why it’s frustrating, almost heart breaking, to see where Halo is now compared to where it is today.
Regardless of how bad things may get or dark things may appear, I will continue to love and support Halo because it’s my passion. Hopefully 343 will realize that they can do better and we’ll see something that will truly revive the Halo Series and Community.
The story lines I thought were great. I’ve never heard of someone talking about a campaign that was crippled because of dialogue. I have to disagree with the ranking system comment though. Halo 2 was a good start, basing rank on wins. Halo 3 did it the best for centering rank on wins in ranked playlists and wins in general between both ranked and social. The Halo 3 ranking system required skill to hit General but if you couldn’t, you still managed to climb the ranks. It really separated the cream from the crop. You’re right about the DLC being top-notch but more people were willing to buy the DLC and populate playlists in the Halo 2 and Halo 3 days rather than Halo Reach. To be fair, Halo Reach had loads of competition too where as Halo 2 and Halo 3 were truly the ONLY games people played during those days. The days before Gears of War, Call of Duty, Battlefield, and all the other titles started picking up traction.