I’ve been seeing a lot of people worried about Infinite because we haven’t seen any gameplay yet and I’m just here to say I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.
If you’re just into Halo and don’t follow how MS does things I understand the worry, but I believe it’s all according to plan. MS has been a rollercoaster this gen. In the beginning years all they did was show off games basically as early as possible and it bit them in the butt. Fable Legends, Quantum Break, Phantom Dust, Crackdown 3, Scalebound… all these games have something in common. They were all announced way too early, shown off too early, or talked about too early and they all either got cancelled, suffered several delays, or turned out differently than what was initially revealed, and those are just the games I can think of off the top of my head I’m pretty sure there’s more.
Since all of these failures, MS has been a lot more careful with reveals. They don’t show off a game until they know exactly what the end product will be, or at least as close to knowing as you can be in game development.
Gears 5 for example had a cutscene at its first E3, then a mode reveal at the next, then in the last 3-6 months or something like that leading up to launch they slowly showed off more of the game until it finally launched. I believe this is what they’re doing with Infinite. MS as a whole is done showing off games too early only for them to end in cancellation or disappointment, they’re being way more secretive and careful of when and how they reveal games because they learned from the start of this gen and now they have plenty of studios they can slowly show off titles for when it’s appropriate to do so. All these studios are working on unannounced projects and they’ll reveal them when they should, not jump the gun because MS is trying to scrape something together to show at E3. This new approach isn’t just a 343i thing, it’s an XGS thing.
Yeah I’m fine with not seeing any gameplay footage yet. It’s like… If they a year ago had shown us some footage of the game and it was like say the first ten minutes of the intro mission… And then the intro mission gets massively overhauled and some feature shown in the footage was removed… How would y’all feel about that? Was it worth it seeing the gameplay super early in that case?
So you’ve got to ask yourself: Do I want to (A) see early footage that’s likely to be changed before release, or (B) see footage of gameplay that’s locked-in and isn’t likely to be massively changed before release?
While not as big of an example, there’s that Halo 2 video from way back, of that mission we never actually got to play. Not exactly an example of gameplay changing, but I feel it kinda counts.
With things like this, patience is indeed a virtue.
I still feel like the discover hope trailer is basically gameplay in some sense, I was happy with that for the time being. I’d be concerned if we didn’t see anything during Xbox “E3” stream though.
None of the games announced “too early” were Halo and Halo 5 had a beta months prior to this point. More importantly if the lesson MS learned from those games was “be less transparent” instead of “have clear marketing and better project management” then that makes more worried about Infinite than I otherwise would be. Following up the earliest beta test in Halo history with virtual radio silence is not an encouraging sign.
The Halo Reach beta was already announced by this point and if we go through all of April with no announcement in sight that will be worrying. Naturally the Covid situation complicates things so I do think that folks should cut them some slack where that is concerned.
That being said the lack of any real confirmation of a Beta or flights at this stage doesn’t bode well given Halo’s track record when lacking a public beta(Halo 2, Halo 4, MCC).
I’m not all doom and gloom of course, but it rubs me the wrong way when people try to downplay the concerns of others, especially when neither 343 or MS has really earned the trust needed to inspire confidence.
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> None of the games announced “too early” were Halo and Halo 5 had a beta months prior to this point. More importantly if the lesson MS learned from those games was “be less transparent” instead of “have clear marketing and better project management” then that makes more worried about Infinite than I otherwise would be. Following up the earliest beta test in Halo history with virtual radio silence is not an encouraging sign.
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> The Halo Reach beta was already announced by this point and if we go through all of April with no announcement in sight that will be worrying. Naturally the Covid situation complicates things so I do think that folks should cut them some slack where that is concerned.
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> That being said the lack of any real confirmation of a Beta or flights at this stage doesn’t bode well given Halo’s track record when lacking a public beta(Halo 2, Halo 4, MCC).
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> I’m not all doom and gloom of course, but it rubs me the wrong way when people try to downplay the concerns of others, especially when neither 343 or MS has really earned the trust needed to inspire confidence.
That’s fair about the betas. I was expecting them to start around a year before launch. I think they’re being very hush hush because of the new console.
> 2533274850869596;2:
> Yeah I’m fine with not seeing any gameplay footage yet. It’s like… If they a year ago had shown us some footage of the game and it was like say the first ten minutes of the intro mission… And then the intro mission gets massively overhauled and some feature shown in the footage was removed… How would y’all feel about that? Was it worth it seeing the gameplay super early in that case?
>
> So you’ve got to ask yourself: Do I want to (A) see early footage that’s likely to be changed before release, or (B) see footage of gameplay that’s locked-in and isn’t likely to be massively changed before release?
>
> While not as big of an example, there’s that Halo 2 video from way back, of that mission we never actually got to play. Not exactly an example of gameplay changing, but I feel it kinda counts.
>
> With things like this, patience is indeed a virtue.
Kind of like what happened to Halo 4? The E3 demo we were shown takes place on the mission Infinity, but we’re shown a bit too much and they ended up reworking the part of the jungle excursion.
E3 Demo: you walked up a hill and looked in through an opening to see a scout group of Covenant arguing with one another as the Elite shoves a Grunt. They then notice Chief, Cortana goes into battle mode and her tone gets a sense of urgency as Chief knocks out the fodder. The Elite reveals an Energy Sword and charges the Chief only to get disintegrated. The source of the beam unclear. Progress ahead, you find more hostiles unlike anything you’ve seen, pick up a gun, kill some more unknowns, and then finally get your face punched in by a Knight.
Release shows us none of this. All of it was replaced with searching IFF tags for Commander Laskey of a UNSC vessel off of some unfortunate Marines who got killed by the Prometheans.
I’m wondering if they regret showing us the new face of evil so soon? If that was the cause for the change or if it was simply just a matter of “we don’t know how to progress here, so we’re scrapping it and brainstorming.”
I’ll admit that I’m surprised that we aren’t even sure WHEN the Infinite beta is going to start.
The multiplayer is almost universally considered the better half of Halo 5 (admittedly not a high bar given the campaign’s lukewarm reception) and I’d assume that the early beta helped a little bit. I’m not a game designer, but logically it follows that the closer to launch that the beta actually occurs, the less 343 can actually do with the information derived from the beta in order to make meaningful changes/improvements to the game.
That may simply not be 343’s goal this time. I don’t know…I don’t work there. Maybe the studio believes it has a more solid game this time and just wants a beta to help with network stress testing and not substantive input on the core game play. They have a large number of ex-professional players on the staff and it’s also possible that some community members are actually playing it under strict NDAs.
All the general community can do is just sit around and hope we get a few crumbs at some point. The “E3” all digital event that Microsoft will be hosting, presumably in June, will hopefully have game play given that last year 343 stated that “E3 2020 will be big for us”…or something to that effect.
343 Industries stated in 2018 that they’d not only be transparent with us, but that we’d have a say in Halo Infinite’s development. The game’s also been in development since at least 2016 and is set to release between September to November of this year, so unless it gets massively delayed, its current state should represent the final product enough for any changes to not cause backlash.
You’re right - although from my perspective it’s more of a trust thing, than simply an impatience thing.
343 haven’t started putting ‘numbers on the board’ until recently. I am a lot more reassured after watching things like the making of the 2018 infinite trailer, and more recent videos. My hope is this revamped approach to Halo means certain things are scrapped and appropriate ‘evolutions’ are made.
If they didn’t have a track record of deviating from halo’s formula, I would have no issue in waiting. I don’t even need gameplay as much as I do information tbf.
Good and bad in both. Good because if they show gameplay early sometimes it can be worrying than the final product could look worse than the demo like anthem did.
Bad because betas will be happening and we need to see if gameplay is smooth with no bugs and enough content for release as we dont want a bad release.
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> People forget that we didn’t see gameplay of Halo 3 until April of it’s release year.
It also began development in 2004 and released in 2007 exclusively for a relatively new, expensive, unreliable console. With that context, it’s not as bad of a wait as what we’re seeing now.