Absolutely more PR than function. His title was incredibly vague.
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I know that sounds good, but even though he higher ups made crap decisions, they did not write game code. If the owners of a crap company hire someone to create a website, and that website doesn’t work because of terrible coding, then you hire a new web developer.
There are some deep-seated problems with the mechanics of this game, and it needs some major rewiring, they need to hire competent people to do that.
There is blame to go all around, but the real loser here is the consumer, many of whom have spent money on this game, but there is a complete lack of acknowledgement of this in any of the messaging coming out of 343 or Microsoft, the self-interest, and narcissism just flows like water.
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That’s a fine thought, but it’s still not the developers fault the higher ups decided to try and make (and fail to do so) their own engine. The devs do what they’re told, the higher ups make the decisions. I’m fully convinced that if 343 had used an updated version of H5’s engine, like all Halos have done before except for CE, then Infinite would’ve been a hit.
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The engine technically is an updated version of H5’s engine, just with added rebranding. It’s similar to the relationship between UE4 and UE5 - it’s the same engine, just with massive updates, rewrites, and additional features.
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It wouldn’t be the first time 343 made use of reputable people within the community/franchise to be just pawns of marketing.
For example :
Halo 5 brought in some HCS Pro League members to test out the gameplay of Halo 5’s multiplayer and provide development feedback.
That was the story.
And yet if you listen to the interviews with members such as Ninja (yes, the Fortnite Ninja), you will come to understand that 343 didn’t even listen to the feedback of the pros they brought in to provide feedback. In said interview, Ninja explained that they had played a map and the feed back was essentially -
Pros Feedback - “This map is perfect. The weapons spawns and powerups are in the right places, and the map layout is just perfect. There is no need for changes. We give the green light to go to the next step of development for this map.”
343’s Response - “Neat. Well it is going to change. So what do you recommend?”
Pros - “Um… we said this map is perfect.”
343i Devs - “Uh huh. And it is going to change.”
Basically it was a publicity stunt.
Bring in big names to playtest and provide feedback. And then you can announce that “This game was playtested by members of the pro league!”
When in actuality, the feedback from said pro-leaguers was entirely ignored as they were not truly there to provide feedback, but rather just be names of famous people that the community would put their trust into in order to increase the marketing of the game.
A great and shallow marketing ploy.
Honestly?
343 is not a great development studio but its marketing team does know how to ensure that they get some good initial sales profits for games that typically have a 3 star rating.
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I remember this story, and it feels just so depressingly 343.
“Something works in halo? quick, change it!”
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Unfortunately that was indeed their design philosophy.
Frank O’Connor has stated in the past, especially in the earliest years of 343’s inception and the development of Halo 4, that “breaking tradition and trying new things” was the be-all goal of the company.
As a result there was a hiring standard at 343 Industries where they screened out Halo fans and former development staff from Bungie, the reasoning being “we want a fresh perspective and new ideas. We don’t want more of the same.”
An admirable goal… … … if you were developing a brand new IP that you want to stand out from the rest in the genre it will be set in or if you were trying to make a spin-off that tries to be an entirely new experience to an already existing franchise.
However, these hiring rules of hiring people who have never played Halo or even downright despised Halo, resulted in the end products being as they are now: something that claims to be Halo but instead ha only 5% of its content being in common with Halo itself.
I have often used an analogy of going to a chinese restaurant, ordering Tempura Chicken and Rice, and then receiving KFC Drumsticks and Sweet Corn instead.
Our expectations were chinese food (Halo Series).
Our request was chinese food (Halo Series).
Instead we received something that only technically fits the description of “Fried Chicken & Common Grain” (doing the bare minimum to have it technically be a Halo game while making every other aspect of the product be nothing like it should have been).
So.
Because the staff of the kitchen didn’t like Chinese Food (the Halo series) but they did know how to use the cooking equipment, they thought it best to try to still advertise Chinese Food and then serve up KFC and act like nothing was odd with that.
And if anything resembled classic Halo, they did have it reworked to be needlessly redesigned; whether visually or mechanically.
Reportedly Halo 4’s original build played as if Halo 3 was just upgraded.
And Frank O’Connor ordered that build to be scrapped because, and I quote, “It is too traditional.”
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