If this game came out with a completely different aesthetic, identical gameplay but didn’t have “Halo” slapped on the front, would you install it? Truthfully, I’m very skeptical that this game would hold a population if it wasn’t for the developers needing to hijack the name of a successful franchise from over a decade ago and have the funding of a multi-billion dollar company.
Given the state of the product, this game would be dismissed as nothing but a very generic cash grab targeting 12 year kids and they parents’ credit cards. Nothing more than another title in the oversaturated market with nothing new to bring to the industry.
I understand that Microsoft would approve of 343i implementing this kind of system to cash in before everyone leaves again. Their absolute disinterest in making a Halo game must cause a lot of stress for a producer that has watched the most incompetent 750 people derail and destroy a franchise.
Funny we’re back here after 6 years, this was among the chief criticisms of Halo 5.
I suspect the game would get played without the branding, I would say Splitgate is proof of that, but it wouldn’t have made a fraction of the impact. No 18 months of hype, or small army of stans to shout down critics, and this game would be lost in the shuffle.
If this game wasn’t Halo, it most likely wouldn’t succeed because there are things that 343/Microsoft have done with the game that only a handful of other games’ communities would tolerate. The success of a game is heavily dependent on its community.
You have to remember that 343 backpedaled on a LOT of their previous promises to make the game less of a grind and more rewarding. Any indie developer that did that would immediately lose half of their playerbase. AAA companies have at least a little bit of headroom to make mistakes like this for the sake of experimentation, but it seems like in 343’s case, it was merely experimenting to see if the cash cow model would work to generate more money for them.
Personally, I feel like the game copies a lot from Destiny 2 and a few other shooters. The PvP, the AI companion (ghosts), the Battle Pass model and microtransactions, and making the campaign content paid with the PvP multiplayer being free-to-play.
I feel like it would still be successful, but not to the degree it is. It would be another Splitgate. The “not bringing anything new to the market” comment puzzles me though. Isn’t that what we asked for? A Halo game similar to the old ones?
Considering it looks like Halo, plays like Halo, and feels like Halo I’d say:
Yes
The issue here is players (such as yourself) are targeting tertiary aspects of this title in order to rip it apart when the core gameplay aspects of it are truly what makes this title a Halo title.