Why Halo is doomed unless huge changes happen now.

Games Halo Infinite
1

343 is doing the exact same thing to Halo that Disney is doing to Star Wars. They aren’t the original owners, and so much corporate money is at stake that they are creatively crippled to the point that they cant do anything with the story even if they had creative people working on the story (which they dont).

They dont understand what an “epic” is and the limitations of all of that.

An epic is only epic if it has a beginning middle and ending. If there is no ending it is not epic, because everything “great” and “important” is made completely irrelevant when the bad guys that were supposed to be defeated keep coming back. I dont understand why so many people do not understand this???

Everything that happened in Halo 1-3 is completely irrelevant. Who cares if the chief saved the world when he does it every single weekend. By the time infinite comes out he will have saved the galaxy at least 7 times already. Turning his character from an epic hero that defied impossible odds into an invincible super hero that is guarenteed to save the day countless times whenever he is needed.

who cares about the covenant or the flood and the threat they pose as well. Here is a new threat that is even more dangerous. And when you defeat them dont worry, we have other threats for you waiting in the next installment.

And here is where my Star Wars analogy comes into play.

Notice what both George Lucas and Bungie did when their original trilogies were done with. They both were smart enough to realize anything else they did further in the storyline would diminish the greatness of what was accomplished. The heros have already won and brought peace to the world.

Lucas worked on his prequels and so did Bungie. They both were smart and creative enough to realize the only way to go was back in time, both the star wars prequels and Halo reach tell stories that amplify the importance and the stakes involved with the original stories instead of diminshing them like Disney and 343 is both doing.

343: “this is the Master Chiefs GREATEST ADVENTURE YET”

Oh yeah really??? These people have no idea what they are doing.

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> Everything that happened in Halo 1-3 is completely irrelevant. Who cares if the chief saved the world when he does it every single weekend. By the time infinite comes out he will have saved the galaxy at least 7 times already. Turning his character from an epic hero that defied impossible odds into an invincible super hero that is guarenteed to save the day countless times whenever he is needed.
>
> who cares about the covenant or the flood and the threat they pose as well. Here is a new threat that is even more dangerous. And when you defeat them dont worry, we have other threats for you waiting in the next installment.

Well, the heroes always win in the end. It’s very rare for the bad guy to actually win the war; they may win a battle here and there, but they hardly ever are the victors. And I mean, there will always be a greater threat, each faction has their own unique thing that makes them so dangerous.

Flood - consuming all life in the Universe
Covenant - killing humanity off and restarting the Galaxy over again
Forerunners/Prometheans - Reigning tyrannical supreme rule over everything like a controlling, paranoid parent.

> And here is where my Star Wars analogy comes into play.

I mean, that’s great and all, but this isn’t Star Wars. I can see where you’re making the comparison, but this still isn’t quite Star Wars.

Honestly, 343i isn’t all at fault here, Bungie had a similar idea for where to take Halo next. They just wanted to do Destiny more than they wanted to continue Halo. If they hadn’t left Microsoft, they likely would have gone on to make Halo 4 and so on.

Could the game have ended on 3? Not really because it ended on a cliffhanger, so it would have left everyone wondering what was to come next.

Should 343i have nixed Halo in the title? Probably, they should have gone with another name to signify it is part of the Halo story line, but it’s not all about Halo anymore. Halo: Combat Evolved, 2, and 3 were all about the Covenant, the Flood, and the Halo array. ODST should have just been called that because it had nothing to do with the Halo rings, but it did take place between Halo 2 and 3.

Other than that? It’s just a title, really. Personally, I don’t mind if they continue the trilogy, but they definitely need to avoid dropping the ball again. Halo 5 was pretty bad mostly because of bad advertisement. If wouldn’t have gotten as much crap as it did if we weren’t told one summary of the story, then fed a different story altogether.

3

Bungie specifically said that Halo 1-3 is and was always from the beginning written out as a trilogy. With a beginning middle and end, and that Halo 3 was very much the end of Halos story. The entire marketing campaign for Halo 3 “finish the fight” revolved around this being the last main game of the storyline. Bungie had absolutely no plans to make Halo 4.

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> 2535423661615819;3:
> Bungie specifically said that Halo 1-3 is and was always from the beginning written out as a trilogy. With a beginning middle and end, and that Halo 3 was very much the end of Halos story. The entire marketing campaign for Halo 3 “finish the fight” revolved around this being the last main game of the storyline. Bungie had absolutely no plans to make Halo 4.

you know its not up to the developers anymore, it’s up to Microsoft, and Microsoft wanted more games, and if bungie wasn’t going to do it they just hired someone else who would, which is 343, because a company’s gotta make money and halo was a good idea for them. Also, nice job picking out the easily explainable, and leaving out the rest of his comment, which has multiple valid remarks.
Halo isn’t a tragedy, they’re not gonna have the enemies win. Yes they could make it seem like that, and turn it around, but thats what halo 5 and infinite’s doing, and apparently you don’t like that either.
343 has a large variety of lore to chose from for infinite, they can use Atriox in infinite, hell, they could use silent shadows if they wanted to, or anything thats already set in stone in the universe. With that being said halo is a large universe, just like star wars, and even if a large commercial part of it (movies/games) isn’t good, theirs still many other pieces of work about halo (Comics, Books, Hopefully A T.V Show)

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> They dont understand what an “epic” is and the limitations of all of that.
>
> An epic is only epic if it has a beginning middle and ending. If there is no ending it is not epic, because everything “great” and “important” is made completely irrelevant when the bad guys that were supposed to be defeated keep coming back. I dont understand why so many people do not understand this???

I don’t know where you got that halo is an epic, and it may be somewhere I havn’t checked, but I have never heard it being called that.
And even if it was called an epic, your definition is completely wrong. Epics are about a legendary person (who often represents parts of their culture) and their adventures, their successes, their failures, their deeds, their upbringing and downfall. Here’s the kicker, they’re MEANT TO WIN. Yes theres going to be a set start, a set end, and often a middle, but their story’s can be expanded upon, epics are also extremely long, accounting multiple adventures and story’s about a person.

But the thing is, halo is a universe, not a person. The only reason people want master chief so much is because he’s Iconic, and the one time they step away from that people get upset, so they stray right back to him and his little posse.
If people gave 343 the freedom they want, they could do amazing things with the series, but no, people want them, force them to stay with master chief and stay classic, which will often, if not always, make things become bland and stale, but that’s not 343’s fault, that’s our fault for forcing 343’s hand

On the opposite side though, they did do alot of things wrong, there was no reason to change the artstyle completely, making it newer, but not completely change it, there was no reason to completely unveil the forerunner yet, but they did, and they cant go back on that, but you need to give them time to fix it, unlike what disney does with start wars, 343 is listening to criticism, and you telling them theyre terrible and are useless to the halo series wont really make anything better, instead why dont you show them how they can improve instead of insulting them.

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<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts.</mark>
*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

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> On the opposite side though, they did do alot of things wrong, there was no reason to change the artstyle completely, making it newer, but not completely change it, there was no reason to completely unveil the forerunner yet, but they did, and they cant go back on that, but you need to give them time to fix it, unlike what disney does with start wars, 343 is listening to criticism, and you telling them theyre terrible and are useless to the halo series wont really make anything better, instead why dont you show them how they can improve instead of insulting them.

We already gave them time to fix it. Halo 5s story was actually much worse than Halo 4. This is because 343 doesnt understand the core tone of what Halo is.

Any true Halo fans understand this. We as Halo fans should’ve been boycotting 343 the second Halo 4 was released. There are dozens of game studios that would do a much better job with Halo than 343. There are probably indie developers that could do a better job.

And here you guys are defending 343 saying we should give them more time to fix it. You are the same “fans” that allowed Disney to desecrate the Star Wars franchise.

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<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not bump.</mark>
*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

imagine if they came out (in 2020) with a new lord of the rings movie.

the movie takes place right after it left off, but there is a new Sauron who is even more powerful than before with an army that is even bigger than before.

This is exactly what Halo and Star Wars are doing. and it stinks real bad

7

I actually quite enjoyed the story of Halo 4-5.

As mentioned… the advertising pre-H5 jarred against what actually happened. And people were (quite rightly) upset that they didn’t get to play enough as Chief.

But apart from that (and the somewhat tedious Promethean fights)… I’m cool with it.

But the very nature of having more games is that more story (and battles) are to follow. And I want to continue playing the MC.

Imagine if comics had to pull up stumps every time the hero beat the big bad…

8

“Huge changes right now” when there’s only a year left 'till Infinite? Making massive sweeping changes to a game that’s already been in development for years at the proverbial last minute?

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> 2535423661615819;3:
> Bungie specifically said that Halo 1-3 is and was always from the beginning written out as a trilogy. With a beginning middle and end, and that Halo 3 was very much the end of Halos story. The entire marketing campaign for Halo 3 “finish the fight” revolved around this being the last main game of the storyline. Bungie had absolutely no plans to make Halo 4.

That is, if you ignore their plans for a Halo 4.

The only thing I agree on is that i343 has upped the threat twice, once with Halo 4 and once again with Halo 5. More personal and less massive scale stories would be a spectacular change.

However I do not agree with the notion to cut the story at the “last main game”, and then leave everything happening after the last rendered story frame in complete darkness, pretending that everything is fine.

“Finish the fight”, doesn’t mean it’s the end of all fights, unless it means the complete and utter eradication of all life, both present and future.
Finishing a fight, means it’s the current one being finished, it does not mean new ones won’t erupt.

10

I don’t entirely agree but I get where you’re coming from. What exactly needs to change?

11

People need to stop putting Bungie/GL/etc on pedestals. They were creat creators but not everything they made was pure gold. Bungie made Reach and Destiny, GL made the PT plus GL wanted to do a ST himself…

I do agree that both 343s Halo and Disneys ST suffer from a similar problem though: the lack of a “global threat”. HCE-3 was about the the human race fighting for survival, PT is about the downfall of the republic, OT about the rebellion against the empire. Personal stories were embedded within this frame. Both H4/5 and ST put those personal stories (Rey vs Kylo; Chief vs Darth Didact/ Chief vs. whatever H5 was about) in the focus and forget to create a proper compelling global background struggle.
While I have some issues with Disneys SW movies, I still enjoy most of them, even love a few. I wish 343 Halo games were as good as Disneys SW movies…

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> > On the opposite side though, they did do alot of things wrong, there was no reason to change the artstyle completely, making it newer, but not completely change it, there was no reason to completely unveil the forerunner yet, but they did, and they cant go back on that, but you need to give them time to fix it, unlike what disney does with start wars, 343 is listening to criticism, and you telling them theyre terrible and are useless to the halo series wont really make anything better, instead why dont you show them how they can improve instead of insulting them.
>
> We already gave them time to fix it. Halo 5s story was actually much worse than Halo 4. This is because 343 doesnt understand the core tone of what Halo is.
>
> Any true Halo fans understand this. We as Halo fans should’ve been boycotting 343 the second Halo 4 was released. There are dozens of game studios that would do a much better job with Halo than 343. There are probably indie developers that could do a better job.
>
> And here you guys are defending 343 saying we should give them more time to fix it. You are the same “fans” that allowed Disney to desecrate the Star Wars franchise.

Spare me the “we TRUE Halo fans” stuff. Halo’s “tone” is whatever the creators behind it decide it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that tone shifting over time. God of War (2018) had a very different tone than any previous God of War, and was critically acclaimed for being bold enough to shake things up - including major changes to the gameplay…

Halo 5’s (and to a lesser extent 4’s) problem is simply that the story was bad and dull. It abandoned certain staples of the series (such as the music), and replaced them with things that were worse - or at the least, more generic and less memorable.

Honestly, for as much as I haven’t been a fan of some of the changes 343 have made in Halo 4 and 5, I’m equally worried about them over-correcting and listening too intently to the self-proclaimed “true Halo fans”, who want the same games they played last decade again, and constantly, unironically use words like “classic” and “iconic”.

343 were put into an unenviable position - created for the express purpose of being handed what was then one of the biggest franchises on the planet, and told to take it forward into the future. Much like The Coalition with Gears of War. Handed games with large, established fanbases who have developed stubborn, particular ideas about what those games were “supposed” to be, and then told to take those franchises and make them their own.

And Disney botched their Star Wars trilogy, because they clearly had no actual vision for where it was going, unlike their Marvel movies… The Force Awakens set a fine foundation, only for The Last Jedi to essentially refute it, and then the Rise of Skywalker to refute the refutation. It was all clearly reactionary - not the confident execution of a careful plan.

I currently have confidence, based on what they’ve said and shown, that 343 seem to have learned a lot from their previous missteps, and Halo Infinite could be at least the beginning of a return to form for the series. Maybe that confidence will end up being misplaced in the end, but I have nothing to gain from assuming the worst 10-12 months before the game even comes out. Cynicism is easy.

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> > On the opposite side though, they did do alot of things wrong, there was no reason to change the artstyle completely, making it newer, but not completely change it, there was no reason to completely unveil the forerunner yet, but they did, and they cant go back on that, but you need to give them time to fix it, unlike what disney does with start wars, 343 is listening to criticism, and you telling them theyre terrible and are useless to the halo series wont really make anything better, instead why dont you show them how they can improve instead of insulting them.
>
> We already gave them time to fix it. Halo 5s story was actually much worse than Halo 4. This is because 343 doesnt understand the core tone of what Halo is.
>
> Any true Halo fans understand this. We as Halo fans should’ve been boycotting 343 the second Halo 4 was released. There are dozens of game studios that would do a much better job with Halo than 343. There are probably indie developers that could do a better job.
>
> And here you guys are defending 343 saying we should give them more time to fix it. You are the same “fans” that allowed Disney to desecrate the Star Wars franchise.

I’m gonna assume that you consider yourself to be one of the “true” Halo fans. Correct?

343 has explicitly stated that it understands it made errors with Halo 5 and is trying to address them with Infinite. 343 was a brand new studio which was given a nearly impossible task. It had to assume stewardship of one of the biggest gaming IPs in the world. Yes, some mistakes were made. But I’m not going to write them off entirely and above all else, I love a redemption story.

But who are we kidding. Despite your calls to “boycott” 343, don’t even pretend that you’re not going to buy Infinite.

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> > > On the opposite side though, they did do alot of things wrong, there was no reason to change the artstyle completely, making it newer, but not completely change it, there was no reason to completely unveil the forerunner yet, but they did, and they cant go back on that, but you need to give them time to fix it, unlike what disney does with start wars, 343 is listening to criticism, and you telling them theyre terrible and are useless to the halo series wont really make anything better, instead why dont you show them how they can improve instead of insulting them.
> >
> > We already gave them time to fix it. Halo 5s story was actually much worse than Halo 4. This is because 343 doesnt understand the core tone of what Halo is.
> >
> > Any true Halo fans understand this. We as Halo fans should’ve been boycotting 343 the second Halo 4 was released. There are dozens of game studios that would do a much better job with Halo than 343. There are probably indie developers that could do a better job.
> >
> > And here you guys are defending 343 saying we should give them more time to fix it. You are the same “fans” that allowed Disney to desecrate the Star Wars franchise.
>
> I’m gonna assume that you consider yourself to be one of the “true” Halo fans. Correct?

Of course he does. He pulled that laughable “True Fan” card after all.