Also, lemme just copy/paste one of my other posts I made on another discussion that can help on this thread, since it helps shed some light on why the community is in shambles.
Question - Why is the Halo Community in Shambles?
Answer A - Gaslighting.
Imagine you go to your favorite Chinese restaurant and you order some Tempura Chicken with Rice.
The kitchen is under new management so you are nervous that the quality of food might’ve gone down a bit.
Much to your surprise, you don’t receive Tempura Chicken with Rice.
You receive a bucket of KFC-Style Chicken and Corn!
Confused, upset, and miffed about this; you speak to the kitchen staff about what you ordered.
Most of them ignore you but the head chef steps out to speak with you.
And he says -
“Why are you complaining? You asked for breaded chicken that was fried and you also asked for a common grain. And that is what I gave you.”
You respond with -
“This is not what I ordered! I ordered Tempura Chicken and Rice (Halo 4 to be Halo 3.5). This is literally KFC and Maize corn.”
To this the owner shrugs and says -
“Look bub, you ordered breaded chicken to be fried and a side of common grain. That is what I gave you (The Halo 4 we received was, at bare minimum, a sci-fi shooter experience. All else was drastically altered to be something different and needlessly changed for reasons that do not stand up to scrutiny.). Again, you are just complaining and upset for hardly any proper reason. Did I not cook good food? Yeah? Then why the heck are you making a scene?”
343 doesn’t accept critics from the fans. Had they done so, Halo 5 would’ve been much more carefully altered to be unlike Halo 4 in terms of style and direction. Instead, they did the bare minimum to make the multiplayer something at least akin to what we wanted.
And unfortunately, there were a lot of new patrons at the restaurant (new players) that had no clue what Chinese Food (the Halo Franchise) was actually supposed to be, so they accepted the bucket of KFC (Halo 4).
So now you have those who want Halo and want it to be like Halo 2 and Halo 3.
And now you also have those who say they want Halo, but want the Art Style and Loadouts of Halo 4 while also including the mobility-shooter aspects of Halo 5.
As a result of this needless change, we have now two crowds to appease, so now no matter what you do; someone is going to be angry with the decisions made.
Answer B - Needless Division of the Audience
Halo had been a consistent experience since 2001.
Halo CE → Halo 2 → Halo 3 → Halo Wars → Halo 3: ODST → Halo Reach
The gameplay for the FPS games remained very much the same since the beginning.
Things were ADDED but not CHANGED to be something else entirely.
Halo CE → Halo 2 added vehicle boarding, dual-wielding, and a new selection of weapons & vehicles to provide more variety and balance to the Sandbox.
Halo 2 → Halo 3 added equipment and more weapons & vehicles to the sandbox.
Halo Reach exchanged some weapons and traded single-use equipment for Armor Abilities.
Halo 4 could be argued to be an extension of Halo Reach, but that is just the bare surface examination. Multiplayer was entirely altered because of the addition of loadouts with perks that players could unlock and customize. Not to mention the addition of kill streaks. Halo 4 really was just Call of Duty: Halo Warfare.
And then there is the PvE sandbox of the campaign, though it is hardly a sandbox. With the way that PvE encounters were redesigned and how limited you are with your arsenal for most of the story . . . the gameplay is just far more linear and bland.
This video by Hokiebird428 will explain it without having me to type another three paragraphs to this already long post.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBv8UVOSG8U
The Art Style remained consistent and only improved upon when the graphical quality was further developed. Halo Reach’s MJOLNIR armor design looks very much a more realistic and less cartoony rendition of Master Chief’s concept art for Halo CE.
Halo 4 comes around with an entirely altered style of artwork that looks like it was ripped from another project entirely. Sure, 4 years have passed since Chief entered cryosleep. BUT when you look at Halo Wars and see the Marines wearing polished armor and still looking like Halo Marines; then why now do the Marines look like they belong in a game of tacti-cool paintball instead of fighting enemies that wield hot plasma?
The Aliens were redesigned to share the same biology requirements but that is just it, otherwise they look like mutated monstrosities. The Elites still have their mandibles, but now they are no longer reminiscent of their nickname moniker. The Aliens of Halo had double-entendre nicknames which represented both their appearance and their behavior/ranking in the covenant hierarchy.
Elites are the officer units of squads and dominate the front-lines. But they are also swift, sleek, and nimble; one describing their appearance and mobility as “Among the Elite”. Their armor design too is made to be something that was refined and sleek to match their nickname.
- https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/034/171/668/large/collin-boudreaux-elite-bind.jpg?1611596876
But 343 makes them hulking and bulky instead of slim. They are wide and when in gameplay with how they move and in cutscenes, they are clumsy and jobbers. In fact, with how they act in cutscenes in Spartan-Ops and Halo 5 . . . they act more like Brutes that desire to show simple might rather than honor or wit. Their dialogue is also less poetic and more like simple space-marauders.
- https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/11/c4/db11c470ee5c2e6e1785114271c5f2a6.jpg
And then you have the design of the Spartans . . . . . . why do they look like they belong to another franchise entirely? Like, I get that they wanted for the armor to have more of an ease with mobility was one of their design reasons of why there were so many gaps in the armor. But as we have seen with the cutscenes of Halo 2 Anniversary and Halo Infinite; Chief’s armor design allows for him to be highly mobile.
And with the design of the armors, most of them do NOT make any sense to begin with.
Let’s look at helmets from Halo 4 and Halo 5.
Wetwork . . . why do I need a visor that stretches vertically from my mouth to beyond my hairline, a visor that does NOT go over the users’ eyes? Not to mention the fact that the helmet is made very awkward, angular, and pointy.
Breaker . . . why does this helmet have a visor that stretches around in a circle over my head, allowing my forehead plate to just be floating there? Is the helmet called breaker because it is designed to be broken?
Legionnaire . . . how? Just how did this pass a military R&D approval process and inspection?
Cyclops . . . why does this helmet not fit a human head? Who went into the files and squished it down on the Y-axis without anyone noticing? Oh wait, according to concept art this was done on purpose . . . why?
But strangest change of all was having Master Chief wake up in his new armor design instead of just receiving a new suit of armor upon reuniting with the UNSC Infinity? They explained it away with “nanobots” that were retconned into the Mark VI that John was wearing. But that makes no sense as -
- The Forward Unto Dawn and its armaments were changed to the new design.
- The breastplate damage that Chief had received during the prologue of Halo 3 was still there, so why didn’t these “nanobots” repair it?
- His glove armor and his exo-suit coincidentally are the same model for Spartan-IV Recruit glove armor and share the same exo-suit.
- Flashbacks during the Halo 4 Prologue show Master Chief immediately in the new design for the armor instead of the Mark IV, Mark V, and actual Mark VI designs.
The Soundtracks were also very much the same mix of gregorian chanting, war drums, some slight techno vibe music, piano, strings, and electric guitar; all used when needed; but they always kept that consistent Halo theme going over.
Halo 4 we heard the soundtrack become . . . different. No shade to Neil Davidge, he knows how to compose music. But most of the music of Halo 4 doesn’t sound like Halo, it sounds like it comes from another spaceopera franchise entirely. Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori left to go do their work elsewhere. But Neil Davidge could’ve at least made the soundtracks have plently of music that were reorchestrations of Martin and Michael’s work.
The music of Halo 4 and Halo 5 lack that makes combat a bit more enjoyable as you have music accompanying you with your efforts, and the music FITS.
For example -
-
Halo Reach combat music -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa0LMnVoyFo&list=PL2tsrmE8VtAU475OoDs2fNCcq5-828p2_&index=5
-
Halo 3 combat music -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0zr33BwWMg&list=PLVFu5mCs8PVi9gzKmuNwqDmRTMNYmHgDR&index=16
-
Halo 3 ODST combat music -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL1JhqY9ygw
And then we have Halo 4 and Halo 5 Gorbians’ soundtrack, which has less of a mix between orchestra and rock and instead goes too far into the orchestra and too little into the rock.
-
Halo 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX5VI0GgO5U&list=PLCsOwPldZgDRneddLnFFuvuNu3Tw8Hceu&index=2
-
Halo 5 Gorbians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6A6DNIKYVA&list=PLaSLxJXMlfU7u7kaL_BO4Xiknc0BQMmPj&index=7
Honestly, with the amount of low-synths; it sounds like they are trying to copy Mass Effect’s soundtrack a little here and there.
And of course, when it comes to music that sounds out of place, the opening music to Halo 4’s “Composer” mission is the worst offender; as it sounds EXACTLY like it was ripped from Star Wars. Just close your eyes for the first minute of this video to see what I mean. It doesn’t sound like Halo, it sounds like an entirely different franchise.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXCKqt4bWDE
Answer C - Welcome to the Internet
The statement that Halo is a toxic community is a bit of a non-take.
Have a look at the Call of Duty lobbies and you hear how toxic that community gets.
On the internet, people can be as toxic as they want because they can just make another profile and continue being sour without any actual repercussions to their statements and actions.
Oh no, you perma-banned my account because I broke thirteen rules in five posts? The response of such people is as follows.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCHcieghZ_0
We are labeled as toxic for similar reasons.
But Answers A and B are the actual reasons.
Failure to actually understand the desires of your target audience and refusal to treat them with any sort of seriousness or respect for some odd reason or another that has yet to be presented that could stand up to scrutiny.
And the divides made in the community by the unnecessary changes that saw it split in the first place.
There are players out there that prefer the Halo 4 and Halo 5 art style for some odd reason.
There are even memes about it (mostly from this one guy for some reason)
-
https://www.deviantart.com/fred-104-centurion/art/Fred-s-Revenant-easily-kills-GEN3-Blue-Team-918208673
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https://www.deviantart.com/fred-104-centurion/art/Meme-Cassie-Cage-hates-Halo-Infinite-Master-Chief-826566656
TL; DR -
We are in shambles for three reasons -
-
343 has gaslit fans for the longest time and for the longest time didn’t listen to any sort of feedback in order to nip it in the bud before it got out of hand as it is right now.
-
343 designed it so that the classic fans are upset and newcomers come in with their first experiences being Halo 4 and Halo 5 to skew their view of the franchise, which enables a divide in the fanbase that could’ve been easy to avoid with any sort of foresight.
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Online anonymity allowing all ages and all maturities to be on a discussion board to voice opinions and target those whom they have had a disagreement while some continue to speak respectfully and with civility.
