Edited by Moderator - Please do not make nonconstructive posts.
*Original post, click at your own discretion.
Here’s the full article, from around the 26th April I believe.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191234/making_halo_4_a_story_about_.php?page=1
Now here’s a disclaimer to everyone: I’m might be using some slang thats at best crude, rude and undesirable, so if you don’t want to read it, don’t.
So please don’t ban me for this moderators, I’m trying to do the right thing by putting a disclaimer up first.
“There were a lot of mistakes we made along the way in which we knew weren’t necessarily the right way to do things,” says Wolfkill of the steep learning curve. “But given what we had to deliver and our timeframe, we accepted that these are necessary mistakes, and we acknowledged and cataloged them.”
Right, what a fantastic mindset for developing a game for a franchise such as Halo 4. Sort of shows the dollar signs were presiding over this decision.
My opinion: Maybe pushing back the date a bit would have been a better solution, after all we’d waited 2 years, a bit longer for a better game is a reasonable tradeoff!
“343 also struggled with balancing familiarity with reinvention, as the studio wanted to please a large fanbase, but at the same time bring something new to the series. While the game received high scores, some critics pointed out a feeling of sameness”
Hate to say it, but a good portion of familiarity is what kept Halo successful… Let’s look at Reach for example, not the best game overall, but it didn’t really change the balanced starting loadouts with the exception of AA’s.
Halo 4 went all COD style with fully customisable loadouts…
“Speaking to Holmes, O’Connor, and Wolfkill, there’s a common theme, or tone in their voices, that recurred over and over again. For all the opportunity and potential they saw in this project, there was some mind-numbing dread of screwing up. Not just screwing up the game, but screwing up your team, your studio, your career, the franchise itself.”
Interesting that they could predict the future… Sad to say they have screwed up, the forums and daily population are a good justification of that…
“An obsessed 343 watched everything unravel. The game generated $220 million in global sales on day one (higher than Halo Reach’s $200 million launch day), and by all accounts, that provided a pretty healthy amount of validation for the team.”
One day sales don’t really give a good indication of how successful a game is, only a long term view can do that… And I’m quoting someone (I can’t remeber who), but it made record sales and now no one plays it after just 6 months. By comparison lets look at the 2nd most hated Halo game, Reach. Right up until Halo 4’s release there was a really sizeable population for a 2 year old game…
I don’t think Halo 4 was that successful
“We hired people who hated Halo”
In context, the article mentions that the hired people weren’t told specifically they were working on Halo 4.
Problem is a fair share probably worked it out, and having Halo haters who know they’re working on Halo 4, its just a sabotage waiting to happen…
“Now months have passed. The game is still a work in process, with its heavy concentration on online components and new digitally-distributed content.”
You f***ing wot mate?
Really, selling a half complete game and then focusing on releasing DLC, not actually fixing problems that the game has? That’s so smart…
Oh and add in that 343i decided to take a nice little 3 week or so break near enough right after release, really showing dedication to their game…
“We did some clever things, we made some mistakes, and we learned really rapidly from those mistakes, and tried not to repeat them,” says Wolfkill. “And we sort of pulled it off. We pulled off both things. We created a studio with a natural, organic culture, which is a worthy source of pride to us, and the studio created a worthy source of pride with the game itself.”
Stop with the BS, honestly, you haven’t learnt rapidly from your mistakes. For christ’s sake, lets look at a recent glitch on Settler, where red players spawn into the water and suicide.
3 weeks and you haven’t fixed that yet? If that’s your definition of rapid, please help us…
Source of pride? Again stop with the BS. It’s a source of pride that your game is pretty much a flop and you’ve lost a good portion of your fan base because you didn’t listen to them?
Clever things?
Campaign is the only thing that I can really think of that hasn’t gone backwards… War games sucks, Spartan Ops isn’t quite up to par with Firefight, no campaign or SP OPS theatre, and Forge mode and the maps don’t seem on the same level of Reach…?
Only clever things I can see is making nice graphics and a nice campaign, nothing else…
This interview reminds me of the Wheelchair Chief from GDC…By that i mean 343i just keep shooting themselves in the foot everytime they say something…I wish it weren’t that way, but Halo 4 is pretty horrible…