EDIT: To those of you who seem to have missed me mentioning it, I’ll say it here at the outset - Halo 4 is a good game as a stand-alone FPS, but in my opinion, it is not “Halo”. Cool? Thanks.
Let’s face it: Halo 4 is not a “true” Halo game. It has a Halo skin on it, but really, it’s a lot closer to COD or any other FPS out there than it is to the traditional Halo games. If I play H4 and don’t consider all of the ways that it is no longer Halo (which is a little sad), it is good game as a stand-alone FPS but it is not Halo.
Obviously I can only speak for myself, but as someone who has been obsessed with the Halo series since Halo: CE, I feel that a lot of the animosity towards H4 (and thus 343i) comes from the disappointment in how far Halo has strayed from its roots.
For those of us who have been playing since the beginning, we all have fond memories of those all-night LAN parties, the Halo teams (“clans” with your actual friends on split screen for the kids out there too young to know games before Live), and the fact that Halo: CE was an absolutely epic game for years and years (even after Halo 2 and the introduction of XBL). This is the standard we hold Halo to, and this is why Halo 4 (and Reach for several) failed.
Halo 2 had XBL - which could have begun the decline in Halo greatness because a lot of the in-home parties ended - but it didn’t die. In fact, Halo 2 did great. Why? Because very little actually changed. There were enough new things (including new maps and the introduction of Covenant weapons, which were mostly just purple-colored replicas of the human counterparts) to keep things interesting but really, it was just a graphics upgrade to Halo: CE.
Halo 3 largely did the same as Halo 2 in repeating what worked and what made the game great. Some of the additions detracted from the classic game (such as the deployable power ups, etc.) but they were so useless in any situation outside of the immediate surroundings (since they were dropped and not tossed/carried/etc.) that they really didn’t change much.
Then came Reach and all of the changes in gameplay. Bungie wanted to attract new gamers and expand the fanbase but in so doing, they started to lose the true Halo fans in numbers greater than those who joined from other games. The fact of the matter is that the casual gamer who plays a game for a few months and moves on is still going to do just that. Catering to those gamers doesn’t enhance the fanbase because of their nature. They simply don’t care.
The Halo fans who stuck it out through Reach (or left temporarily waiting for H4), were all hoping 343i could return Halo to its roots - to make it “Halo” again. Halo: CE and Halo 2 were practically interchangable and Halo 3 wasn’t too vastly different and those games had excellent, long-lasting online numbers (not CE, obviously). Reach did not enjoy the same. Unfortunately, 343i continued Reach’s trend of major changes and increased simplicity of gameplay. No longer is Halo a game which requires skill to be good at, which demands hours upon hours of gameplay to improve, but rather, it has become just another FPS that any casual can pick up and immediately be decent-to-very good.
The good news for 343i is that it is just like any other FPS, so no one will avoid buying it thinking it won’t be any fun. The bad news for 343i is that it is just like any other FPS, so it has only so much replay value before it is no longer fun to play because it takes so little skill. The worst news, though, is that the Halo fanbase now knows that 343i doesn’t intend to rekindle the fire of the original Halos and appeal to true Halo fans while having other fans join the ride, but rather continue Reach’s trend of appealing to the collective public and hoping Halo fans keep riding on the name alone.
Again, I can only speak for myself, but 343i has lost me as a devoted fan. I will not be preordering Halo 5, and I will not be obsessively following 343i for other games. Eventually once the price has dropped, I’m sure I’ll buy or rent it and play for a bit like I would with any other casual FPS; however, this is not Halo, and it’s really just sad to see such a great game finally fade away.