I just got done playing split gate, it’s a lot of fun and honestly I can say that if the company that makes split gate had the resources and money 343 had, they would have absolutely made a superior game in every single way possible (and are currently doing a lot of stuff superior to them) This is an indie game folks
It all boils down to 343 and probably more likely by extension Microsoft, rushing halo out for the holidays before it was ready, showing complete disrespect to the players and the Halo IP
The entire concept of 343 should have never happened. 343 was handed a golden goose and 343 said “if we force feed it can we get faster eggs?” We’ve seen that this company is incapable of having a successful launch. I don’t trust this company or any of its promises.
As with every post I’ll follow this up with the notation that yea, the devs did a great job under the conditions they were under. But I don’t grade by curves. Those are just bad arguments to make.
I don’t think 343 has any idea what they want to do with Halo. 343 isn’t a terrible studio, they know how to make a somewhat decent game, but they clearly don’t have any vision for the Halo franchise. Maybe they should have created their own new IP instead of ruining someone else’s work? Oh yeah… I just remembered that’s where 343 is lacking the most… writing and creative talent.
They had a vision with Halo 5 but the loud minority made it so that vision will never come to pass. Take a look at Halo 4 and halo infinite. Both of those games were made to please the masses while Halo 5 was a new idea
Pretty wacky and crazy that Splitgate was an indie game made in 6 months by a group of friends with a $0 budget, but it has been 4 months since the “beta” and 343 has done nothing but constantly break the game with a full army of employees and a half a billion dollar budget
Bungie made a new game every 3 years. Let’s see where Infinite is in 9 years (up until now, plus another 3)
Halo infinite is doing far worse in the first 3 months than Halo 5. Even funnier. In halo 5 we already had forge by now. Right now in this moment 6 years ago I was having a blast in forge and so many other people too.
Yeah a game with 5 whole games in it compared to one and in the beginning of Halo 5 MCC didn’t even work. You couldn’t even find a single match. Had to wait hours.
Sorry, other companies that don’t have the resources 343 has have made complete games. There is a lot more going on than just rushing a product out the door. Take Bungie for an example with Destiny. Bungie asked Activision to give them an extra year before D2 was released, and just like infinite, both games released as a disaster. The reason being is literally in plain sight, that you would have to be blind not to see it.
Both 343 and Bungie completely changed everything about their games that literally no one asked for.
Both companies had the devs work their a** off only to have either the content created scrapped or cut from the game casing a lot of extra work, that most likely cause a lot of the issues.
Both companies had a engine rework and both engines have major issues.
Both companies built their games around a shop that just that alone screwed up the quality of the games when it comes to it’s structure and decisions made designing content.
Both companies deliberately changed the games to condition the player base to play the games how they want them to. Giving them the option to manipulate the system and instead of creating a game, they both focused on how to create padded playtime more so than anything else.
This is only the surface of the issues with both games and both companies, and they are not interested in getting actually feed back. That is why destiny has, and infinite will suffer for years to come.
I’ll keep repeating this because it is 100% fact. Poor leadership leads to poor development.
This is not a case of Microsoft not giving poor little 343i not enough time to do what they wanted, this is a case of a company that seemingly takes all its users/fans for granted and thinks they can do nothing and still get people to stick around.
Their first blunder was easier to overlook but when looking at their whole body of work it has been blunder after blunder for a decade. They should have cleaned house after H4 and the abysmal launch of MCC and taken a different direction with the studio.
(The campaign killed a lot of hype for Halo 5) but overall they did clean house and they did go a new direction after Halo 4. Just take a look at the forge. If that isn’t “clean house” to you then idk what is.
What they need to do is stop catering to the masses and after to the Halo fans that’s always been here
343 has bad direction, and always have. They threw the H4 team together with people who wanted to bring Halo in different directions, and they did the same with H5. They brought in ex pros or pros to develop H5 and promptly ignored feedback.
343 is just a bunch of people who keep trying to evolve Halo, but do it in ways that are more like mutations or abominations. 343 has had 2 games to experiment with before they understood that what the Halo franchise is known for is not fancy new mechanics or cookie cutter features from other shooters. What the Halo franchise is known for is being Halo.
Bringing Joe Staten back was a great idea, because now we have the narrative and story feel back on track. Now we need their environment team and gameplay team to study what their predecessors have accomplish, and then see what they can do to respect those decisions before making their own.
This is what 343 needs right to do right now: Do Homework on what makes Halo Halo, and then act upon it with this knowledge in mind
Infinite can be good, if they would just put in the effort to listen to fans and revisit old games.
I don’t even care if they are trying to evolve the game or broaden the playerbase, but ultimately that’s not what draws players into any game, nevermind Halo.
While H5 MP was a good game, it was barely recognizable as a Halo game. H4 was a Halo game but with mismatched features that didn’t fit its gameplay.
What the fans want, and what the fans expect, are basically what makes Halo a great game, and great games naturally draw an audience. 343 messed up two games before realising all they had to do was make Halo 3.5 in terms of gameplay, and bring Halo’s story direction back to one of mystery, exploration and wanderlust.
There alot of “new” features in Infinite that can be removed for better gameplay experience too.
Random Racks should be removed
Airdropped Power weapons should be removed
Vehicle drops should be removed
These are all features that first take away from the game, before putting it back in a very random manner, which is not cool or fun. Imagine you have a Burger, but the patty is taken out, then you have to wait 5-10 minutes before the waiter delivers the patty to you in the form of a Nugget.