I’ve never been someone who bashes 343 just because their name is different than Bungie. I never bashed 343 for Halo 4. I always took them for what they were - new. I knew their love for the franchise was there and it would guide them after they found their place in the world and got solid footing; I for one don’t even count Halo 4’s negatives. 343 built the game in only two years and the vast majority of the team had never worked a day together before starting on Halo 4. Yes there were screw ups and it’s part of our end of the deal to let them know what those were and move on while praising the good. Halo 4 had a lot of good in its story and really began moving Halo in the direction it needed to and should go both in the story it told and also in the way that story was told in a post-Mass Effect world. What Halo 4 suffered from more than anything was the bandwagon. It just became cool to hate on more than a logical and mature assessment of the issues at hand and the same issues were rehashed and rehashed on YouTube over and over with often contradictory statements and feelings from video to video. And of course we can’t discount the opportunity of fame and monetary gain for making videos that criticized the right topics, too. This being said, my case for 343 isn’t helped with their just mind boggling canonical screw ups and retcons, which for this in all honesty they deserve well worded and decisive responses.
Now flash forward four years from Halo 4 and I have so little hope for the franchise and as I write this I consider leaving it all behind. It’s in many ways related to Halo 5 but not entirely. First, after months of thought and research, I have also concluded that the issues with Halo 5’s story came more from the top than from 343. I’m not some fool that pretends to have all the answers and has no grasp of economics, however there’s a reason Josh Holmes wasn’t scheduling the board members’ meetings and Bonnie Ross wasn’t managing the quarterly profits of Microsoft and/or Xbox. Let each professional do what that person is hired to do unless their title of professional is not earned or maintained within reason. This was the first part that really knocked me out of the fascination I’ve maintained for Halo for years since I first began playing. Like most people I really was soured by Halo 5.
But the more I really looked at the franchise the more I found grievances. Halo lacks inspiration. Halo doesn’t inspire me, its characters, aside from John, don’t inspire me; back when Nyland wrote the extended fiction that was different but there’s only so much the old entries will satisfy in the form of story. In anticipation for Mass Effect Andromeda I’ve played through the trilogy again and it really staggered me how much character matters and what it can do for the overall effect. Halo really doesn’t have this in that powerful of a capacity often in the games. Reach and ODST did and of course the 4 and those were good but they just weren’t on that level, save Halo 4. To sum all this up Halo just doesn’t make me feel anything like Mass Effect or other forms of media do. And this saddens me a lot. There’s no reason Halo can’t have a campaign that breaks the mold of previous ones in scale and character. It could be inspiring and really take your breath away, it could really be different and make people really play Halo for it’s story, it could put Halo on the map again. Halo’s story can also exist well in other mediums, too.
I had mono years back and my immune system isn’t the greatest, so about every two to three months I miss about a week of school. I started watching on Netflix the animated Star Wars series. The longer I watched it the more I saw it differently than how I saw it when I was younger, I realized that it managed to tell pretty good stories, it made the clones out to truly be warriors and forces to be reckoned with. It also managed to make Anakin to be a little more believable as to becoming Darth Vader instead of the grand master of whining your way to contradictory self induced suffering. It told a good story but in a way that satisfied so many levels of what was expected. It whetted the appetite for Clones battling it out epically against hordes of Battle Droids but had an over arching story that was achieved, and like stated made aspects of Revenge of the Sith more acceptable. I would love to see this with Halo in some form. It really bugged me in the Halo Wars 2 trailer how scared 343 or someone is to show gore. Such as the convenient cement rubble and such. I think gore on Doom level is unneeded in Halo but it needs to be taken seriously. The Star Wars the Clone Wars animated (and arguably kids’) show shows more canonically accurate wounds than Halo. Just think about that.
Halo has been stuck in this place of trying to accommodate younger players to boost falling sales, thus the afore mentioned issues. I used to play the Tryarch Call of Duty’s when they were good (WaW, BO, BOII) and the amount of screeching preteens I’ve dominated in my time is unreal. They get their hands on the games that are popular regardless of their ratings. This decision puts Halo in this place where it loses both sides of the spectrum. I really, really think Halo needs to go back to its military roots and bring in military members to advise aspects of the games. Many games do this and it’s impossible to go wrong with it. If a direct idea does not work, then it can be adapted. I think this will also help in making the Spartans feel cool, let’s all be honest here, Spartans in the games from campaign to multiplayer don’t feel like super soldiers or fun.
Now you may not understand why I feel so desolate about all of Halo for this. My problem is I see no place where the problems I have, ones I think hinge the franchise on success or staleness inevitably leading to the death of the franchise, will be addressed. I’ve put a lot of thought into all this and the conclusion I have reached is that the problems lie in numbers in the community. I feel like the community spends so much time upset over petty things and their “feedback” ends up like “The Plasma Caster’s sub munitions need a .05% increase to their bounce or it’s useless. PS - 343 kill urselfs and take ur microtransactions with u.” And non-players affecting the game.
The community can’t make up it’s mind what it wants and it’s constantly getting angry at itself for decisions it makes. Spartan Charge, for example, was something that made sense and worked better in gameplay in the Beta due to its drastically smaller reticule. I saw posts here and there asking to widen it to make it easier to use. Flash forward to now and it’s the scourge of the entire game. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the community wasn’t held up like it is. The Halo Community is given this mostly self proclaimed status of holiness when often it doesn’t know what it even wants now, let alone what’s best for the series long term. This is really where I have lost my faith, and I don’t see the series changing where needed. I mean, come on guys, Halo 5 sits between 23rd and 26th place on most played. I think what the community wants and what people who aren’t already Halo pros want are very different, Halo isn’t growing and if anything it’s dropping. And in a world that’s seen Mass Effect, Halo’s in game story takes a seat in the trunk. Halo is failing on all fronts and it isn’t doing anything new or different, which it needs to do because now isn’t working.