Since Halo 4 released people have said “Halo is dead”, and Halo’s reputation and popularity has struggled considerably since then, following that game came the worst launch in gaming history and the next year, a Halo so widely disliked that it spawned a 5-year mainline hiatus and soft reboot of the series.
Infinite seemed to be the turnaround for the series after the 2018 + 2019 trailers, but some worried as things stayed silent for the years between despite Unyshek saying that wouldn’t happen.
Though it was this August when things got truly bad.
Many people liked what they saw, but the game was mocked relentlessly for looking so pitiful in the visual department, lots of pop-ins, flat lighting, lifeless skyboxes, smudgy textures all over, nothing like what we saw back in 2018… I mean the phantom looked like a high school student’s Unity-engine project lol.
Covid has obviously impacted the industry a ton and has no doubt affected Infinite, but what we saw looked like a game that was severely behind.
So just coming off PR beating that 343 received after August, we got silence and more leaks of course. And because it was leaked, we received confirmation of a replacement to primary/ secondary color options created to sell color combos. The community is rightfully up in arms about this; earlier today it was revealed through the official Chips Ahoy terms and services that emblems will cost $2 each (and will be split up between spartan emblems and those you see in the lobby) meaning a full emblem costs $4. It was also said that the Monarch coating costed $5… $5 for the color purple,
we’ve somehow gone further backwards than Halo CE.
Many in the casual audiences dropped interest in August, now the core fans are very upset and all we get are more excuses instead of a proper “We’ll improve things”.
We even have huge Youtubers like YongYea talk about these issues to a bigger audience, This is supposed to be THE Halo game and it seems like 90% missteps so far, we’ve arguably received NO positive news since August and we just receive worse news every week it feels like.
A lot of the management, studio heads, etc have went radio silent and are relying on the community manager being a riot shield for their poor decisions. Halo fans deserve better communication from the community manager but even more so from the higher-ups who straight up ignore all of this. They need to stop being vague and get on top of things, it’s embarrassing. They’ve done a poor job on all fronts of community discussion which is inexcusable for a series like Halo, especially with the position it’s currently in.
343 need to knock it out of the park this time, they no longer have the excuse of “lack of time” or resources. Let’s hope the rumored Nov. 9th showing or upcoming blog posts can bring some light to all this so many of us can look forward to this game again.