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“We hired people who hated Halo”
Ladies and gentlemen, the reason why we have the Halo 4 we do. I am honestly baffled by this, although for some reason I’m not completely surprised.
Gah, that article explained everything! No wonder Halo 4 is as awful as it is. 
While there is more to the article than that…I did do a double-take at that.
Ok 343, you better have a -Yoinking!- PERFECT excuse for this.
EDIT: 343 scrapped this, because it was too traditional.
???
343, please reply.
Where’s the proof?
So from what I read and from what the game shows. They got a group of people that didn’t like how Halo worked and decided to screw with it. And that’s what got them excited about it?
> Holmes recalls was when the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a “very traditional” Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about.
>
> 343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional.
The -Yoink-?
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Another gem from the article:
“It’s during that time you’re questioning yourself: 'How is this going to work, will it be as I envision it in my head?” says Holmes. For Halo 4, he says there were a few epiphany moments that helped boost the morale of the team. One of the earlier ones that Holmes recalls was when the team completed a small piece of the Halo experience that he described as a “very traditional” Halo. User research showed that people thought it was a lot of fun, and it showed that the team was capable of making a Halo game that was true to what the series was about.
343 scrapped it, Holmes says, as it was too traditional. But that first build showed the new team that this amalgamation of different studio cultures could work together and achieve a common goal.
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You beat me to it by a few seconds.
I shall get my revenge!
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Lets see how the fan boys defend this one
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> Where’s the proof?
Did you not click the link?
So they hired people that wanted to change the franchise. One of the main things 343 was trying to do, was change Halo. I’m not surprised at all with the decision to hire people that disliked Halo because those people would make the game different and wouldn’t try to stick to the roots as much as fans of the classic gameplay would.
Now I’m not particularly fond of that directive at all, to be honest. I don’t want the Halo I came to know and love to conform to modern FPS standards. Truthfully, in the event I wanted a modern ‘class based’ FPS experience, I’d just play a game that’s already been getting it done right and has been for years, like Cod or Battlefield.
Area shooters are my personal favorite type of FPS and to see my Favorite arena shooter moving away from its very core game mechanics deeply saddens me.
I suppose another Unreal Tournament will come out eventually, as I’m not too big on Gears of War.
This is my favourite paragraph:
"We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of ‘X,’" says O’Connor. "But what that really meant was, ‘I feel like this game could be awesome because of ‘Y input’ that I’m going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I’m passionate about proving it.’ So we ended up with a bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team."
Uh, yeah, why would you do this?
However, I am a bit skeptical about the validity of that article regardless.
Unless they had a vast majority of their entire workforce who fell under that category, I doubt they had as much influence as some people are thinking.
Of course they had influence and of course it has long lasting repercussions, but in all fairness the past Bungie Halo games were far from the all amazing and perfect games many people nostalgia them to be.
I can completely understand why somebody might have a strong dislike or even hate of the Bungie Halos due to simple gameplay mechanics that may have been unfair by ‘modern’ standards. Not everybody is going to find the same things you nostalgia about, to be attractive gameplay wise.
Personally, even though Halo 4 came with some bad decisions, I strongly doubt people who simply ‘hated’ Halo in the purest sense of the word would have been allowed to return after an interview. Hating one or two things you feel strongly about, and using that hate to fuel a desire to find a better way or make the feature better/more fair/more rounded/whatever - is a whole other matter entirely.
Come to think of it, there’s a lot of people on this forum who “hate” Halo 4 features, but use that hate to try and find solutions because they believe the game/franchise has potential, instead of simply just hating those features and not helping… :]
As for them scrapping the first build…I chalk that up to 343(over-arcing supervisors and producers etc) wanting to put their own stamp on “Halo” and it not having quite so much to do with the employees on the smaller teams as much.
INb4: “Fanboy!!11!!” - I’m hardly a 343 fanboy. They’ve made some very bad decisions with Halo 4 and they need to learn from them if they want Halo 5 to succeed. But I think they’re starting to correct their course and heading.
No hope for Halo 5…
They scrapped a build they had made because it was too traditional… Screw you guys. Just stop making Halo. Please?
Read the article and its fine. You’re trying to take stuff out of context and blow it up OP. Also every single person they hire doesn’t need to like Halo, that’s ridiculous. First and for most they need to be talented at what they do and be able to contribute that talent and ideas to possibly make Halo better. Some times its a good thing to have outside perspectives.
> Uh, yeah, why would you do this?
>
> However, I am a bit skeptical about the validity of that article regardless.
Gamasutra is a legit gaming site. I prefer Kotaku myself and it is way past April 1st…and after GDC does this really seem unlike 343i?
> This is my favourite paragraph:
>
> “We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of ‘X,’” says O’Connor. "But what that really meant was, ‘<mark>I feel like this game could be awesome because of ‘Y input’</mark> that I’m going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I’m passionate about proving it.’ So we ended up with a bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team."
I’m guessing that ‘y input’ is stuff like instant respawn, flinch, ODs, and paper vehicles.
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MORE GEMS FROM THE ARTICLE:
“As a general rule, we try not to overreact to the loud, vocal minority,” says Holmes.
Translation: You guys who post on our forums everyday and keep it alive, we’re not gonna listen to you.
Thankfully that changed post-launch thanks to bs angel, Bravo and Quinn.
“There were a lot of mistakes we made along the way in which we knew weren’t necessarily the right way to do things, but given what we had to deliver and our timeframe, we accepted that these are necessary mistakes, and we acknowledged them.”
Why not just delay the game? The game was clearly not ready to launch. It had no CSR, File-Share, good playlists, gametypes, custom game options, campaign theater, campaign scoring, etc.
They scrapped something because it was “too traditional” right this just proves my point that the halo we all knew and loved is gone and isnt comn back 343 are bending halo over and are going crazy on it
they are turning our beloved franchise into something they wanted rather than what we the community the consumers wanted
i hope 343 suffers as a consequence
