The MCC has turned away from the original plan of being a ‘true to the original collection’ for quite a long time now, it more resembles a gelatinous blob than anything resembling the original goals of the product, both in terms of file size and scope. It would be nice to be able to get a ‘vanilla’ experience (warts and all) for each game or at least the most popular titles within the collection.
My main reasons are as follows, the original point of the collection (to play the old games as they were, unchanged) has long since been left by the wayside, that is to say this is not the “Custom Edition Collection” or the “Modernized Collection”. Even from the beginning there had been significant changes and removals to the original formula of each of these games and the experience. The most severe changes being how the online experience operates such as what social features work and which ones were completely removed in favor in very skin deep content, how the games play in online campaign and matchmaking due to hit registration problems and the removal of upfront communication and a lack of a official website for community creations such as forge & theater.
If a true to form experience can not happen under the MCC, whether technical debt or some other reality. I would be glad if a distinction could be made between the MCC and the original games and an effort to restore some of the titles to what they were as a separate stand alone product on the market.
Even on the other side of the coin as a ‘expanded version’ so to speak, MCC fails in this regard as well due to missing and almost nonfunctional features, the new customization features possibly being the biggest upfront failure of the collection due to simply not being able to view someone’s preferred custom character unless you’re inside a match; of course the mod tools have been a huge boon for the community and an expansion on them would be very welcome.
I think what I’m trying to get at, whether it be in the form of a true to the SP/MP product of one of the original games or “new and improved classic” that expands what the original games set the groundwork for, I don’t believe it can be done within MCC from what has been displayed of the collection for the last eight years of its life cycle. Cosmetics, poses and other such things face value additions were never really needed, the only significant changes that were welcomed was the edition of a CGB (Which can still be improved and hopefully will be) and mods. I’m not trying to write off the significant fixes the collection did receive, but that was something caused by the collection itself so I apologize for not mentioning those sooner; it still is the case that we are missing features that the original games had and features people have requested since the start and especially on the relaunch on recent Xbox consoles and PC, possibly due to events leading up to the announcement of the PC port.
If all that can be done to fix the core issues made by or improve upon the collection is to make something entirely separate from it, I hope that is what can be done. I truly do not believe these changes, fixes & restored content will happen at this point within the collection.
Dude Paragraphs, c’mon, if you want us to read your post don’t just post a huge wall of text, add some spacing so we can actually read it.
I can read it just fine
To answer the question of the thread title, no there are no plans to release the originals as stand alone titles nor will there ever be. The core gameplay of the games within the collection is preserved (or at least well enough) and things like original menus and UI design while adding to the atmosphere of their respective titles would not mesh with other titles.
I enjoy the collection aspect of the MCC. I love cross game playlists and playing across themed sets of levels from decades worth of Halo story. I often queue in matchmaking with multiple titles enabled and enjoy the surprise of which will be selected. I truly do enjoy all of it, from Reach to H4.
Even if 343 decided to release the games as standalone there is no guarantee that the hitreg would be any better or some aspect of it magically superior than the MCC version. Some features might return like better theater support, but things like Bungie’s plethora of stats won’t return nor Bungie’s favorites, nor Bungie.net fileshare.
What you really want is emulation.
Emulation would never be officially supported, the biggest pet peve for me is honestly the size of the game due to the live service elements, unneccessary changes to matchmaking & the changes to the social scape (I’m referring to your ability to communicate to other players primarily)
You can uninstall aspects of the collection you don’t plan on utilizing like entire titles or selectively the campaigns or multiplayer of a specific title, but not as granular as things like new cosmetics or maps. If I recall H2A is probably the largest individual title clocking in at ~30 - 40 GB due to how H2A and H2C must be installed together.
I would argue the advent of party chat and discord has had a larger impact on how players communicate with each other more than how 343 has implemented the lobby system.
The changes to the lobby system have had a larger impact toward antisocial lobbies than you’d think. Aside from there being more clicks to check out specific things on a player profile, there are things you aren’t seeing, a much smaller window to see it inside of matchmaking & your ability to communicate has been negatively hit as well.
No more pre/post game lobbies (Though sometimes MCC does have players stick around, it just wont let you interact with their nameplates) It’s more difficult to communicate ingame too due to how the voice chat was implemented within MCC as well, mainly due to cross team/team communication being a settings menu exclusive option with no way to keybind it & proximity chat being removed entirely. Almost every Free 4 All lobby ends up dead silent due to this.
on pc we can now play the console versions through the mod tools on the tag testers.
all except halo and halo 2 which use the pc port code. can even play splitscreen on 3, odst and reach and copying the fmod folder from the mcc game to their mod folder means your will get all the audio to play. the only things missing are loading screens. plus you can turn all the debug text off via the debug menus or console.
Game very bloated.
Myriad problems
Too many ill fitting cosmetics, not enough improvements
Would be nice to have more community requests implemented when possible
If you dont want all these other things that were bolted onto to the collection over the years why can’t you just have the stand alone game close to as it was as possible.
The goals of the original game in terms of the social scape is not respected within the collection and the bulk of it was outright removed.