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[L*][*N*K]

MS owns like 100 studios now. Throw it to one of the Activision FPS studios, give them a shot. I dunno. Throwing it back to 343i after their neverending fuckups and bastardization of the series seems just as bad of an idea.

343 exists only for the Halo business, it is their sole purpose, and last year they basically restructured the whole studio on the idea of giving Halo a brand-new start, and by the way throwing a franchise at a studio is really wrong and has proven to be awful for any game that was forced on a studio who didn't have a vision for it, furthermore this game has been in works for at least a year based on Pierre Hintze's tweets last year.

I am not saying they will do a fantastic job I am just saying we need to lower the torches and pitchforks, every studio have a fuck up here and there but they can bounce back.

 

[VolticArchangel]

There never was a 10 year plan, that was mention once by Chris what's-his-face i think way before launch and never mentioned again.

Pretty sure Bonnie Ross and co didn't even have a 6 month plan.

Separate from Infinite. New sequel. They are not doing a 10 year plan.

So, basically we're getting a Halo 7.

I have no fucking hope with 343i, but Certain Affinity however, know what they're doing and given their history with the IP, better than 343i by miles.

The problem is the culture surrounding Microsoft's first party leadership and Phil having a hands-off approach towards them.

We already see what's happening with The Initiative and the rebooted builds of Perfect Dark, again and again, resulting in senior staff leaving the studio, and Crystal Dynamics being called in for support because Gallagher has a history with them and they're his "yes men" with no questions asked.

If MS wants the next Halo to succeed where Infinite has failed, they better have Certain Affinity in the driver's seat and 343i as the support. Not the other way around.

 

[clarky]

So, basically we're getting a Halo 7.

I have no fucking hope with 343i, but Certain Affinity however, know what they're doing and given their history with the IP, better than 343i by miles.

The problem is the culture surrounding Microsoft's first party leadership and Phil having a hands-off approach towards them.

We already see what's happening with The Initiative and the rebooted builds of Perfect Dark, again and again, resulting in senior staff leaving the studio, and Crystal Dynamics being called in for support because Gallagher has a history with them and they're his "yes men" with no questions asked.

If MS wants the next Halo to succeed where Infinite has failed, they better have Certain Affinity in the driver's seat and 343i as the support. Not the other way around.

You do know they fired pretty much all the management and completely restructured the studio after the live service disaster dont you?

We're already seeing the benefits of that right now.

 

[VolticArchangel]

You do know they fired pretty much all the management and completely restructured the studio after the live service disaster dont you?

We're already seeing the benefits of that right now.

I do.

The layoffs were around ~100'ish employees.

They still have more than 500 people working (full-time, non-contractors) and are obviously bigger than Certain Affinity.

 

[Black_Stride]

After 343 has delivered on Season 5, im back in to trusting them.
While more campaign is what I was really looking forward to, they really have supported the MP well.
So they have my vote of confidence.....for now.

They brought back frikken FireFight.....its not Warzone FireFight, but its FireFight nonetheless........Ill wait for Warzone Firefight, im sure 343 are working on it.

unreal would look weird for halo, the art style will lose its soul.

Thats not how engines work.
Thats not how anything works.

The artstyle of a game is not tied to the game engine.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Still beating that dead horse, huh?

Let it die already. This was a fun ride when it was still relevant, but at some point the damage that you've done to the brand is so far beyond repair that the only reasonable thing to do is to put it in the grave.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

They brought back frikken FireFight

Time to play halo again.

 

[Darsxx82]

Total separation between Halo Campaign and Halo Infinite MP.

There is no need for both sides to launch at the same time.

For the campaign, I would pass the baton to a new Studio or one of the many that it now has to make the development process faster so that new blood can offer its vision of Halo SP.

It is true that great work is being done with Infinite MP, but the time has come to separate the paths of the campaign and the MP.

 

[LastBattle]

Looking forward to it. Had a lot of fun with Infinite's campaign. I shame we didn't get an expansion so I can have an excuse to play through it again.

Yeah man, surely they can build on the foundations they laid with Infinite. What was there was damn good, just a little bit light in content. Im specifically talking campaign as I can’t be bothered with the multiplayer. My hope
hope is they have a smaller team dedicated to
Pumping out DLC for infinite while another team builds the next gen unreal 5 version.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

I hope the new game sticks with the lore and at least continues where Halo Infinite left off.

But I would still love a game based on Ancient Humanity.

 

[NikuNashi]

343 exists only for the Halo business, it is their sole purpose, and last year they basically restructured the whole studio on the idea of giving Halo a brand-new start, and by the way throwing a franchise at a studio is really wrong and has proven to be awful for any game that was forced on a studio who didn't have a vision for it, furthermore this game has been in works for at least a year based on Pierre Hintze's tweets last year.

I am not saying they will do a fantastic job I am just saying we need to lower the torches and pitchforks, every studio have a fuck up here and there but they can bounce back.

When did they make a good HALO game?

 

[L*][*N*K]

When did they make a good HALO game?

Never, I personally don't think it is their fault as much as the rest of the world tend to put it on them, Halo at this point is like the Star Wars of gaming, it was put on an impossible pedestal and no matter what anyone makes it will always be disappointing, so maybe this restructuring is actually good for the series? Maybe do something completely new with it?

 

[Black_Stride]

Still beating that dead horse, huh?

Let it die already. This was a fun ride when it was still relevant, but at some point the damage that you've done to the brand is so far beyond repair that the only reasonable thing to do is to put it in the grave.

Still being played and still on the top 50.....sure its not doing Fortnite or Warzone numbers, but still a franchise thats holding its own.

The campaigns can move on to Unreal and basically be a separate entity.

The MP is current doing well and basically every update has been well received with Season 5 being quite a jump in quality for the game.

When did they make a good HALO game?

Halo Infinite has good Multiplayer, and a pretty good Campaign.
Halo 5 had brilliant Multiplayer....fuck the Campaign.
Halo 4 was a good campaign....fuck the Multiplayer.

 

[Mephisto40]

I see the Halo : Infinite 10 year plan is running right on schedule...

 

[Slicker than your average]

No they don’t.
It's still the 1998 Q3 engine at heart.

For me no matter how many upgrades cod gets the assets and art or whatever it is. It's just a very distinctive look that cod has that just looks old no matter what.

Cars never look or feel right. Especially how they blow up everything that isn't a human feels like it's made out of rectangles.

 

[BbMajor7th]

I think the series needs major reinvention, but I'm not sure UE5 is the place to do it - the engine seems a little ahead of its time and is a little too hefty for the current crop of consoles. The impression I get with Slipspace is that the engine was built with a clear purpose in mind, but the game design pivoted towards open-world later on and they didn't have time to retool it. That's the great thing about propriety engines, you can build them for the game's requirements, but that only works if you've got a clear idea of what the final game will need to do.

 

[BlackTron]

343?

Guess Xbox has given up HALO being a core franchise.

Incoming, Masterchief removes helmet to reveal a

Spoiler

stunning and brave blue haired immigrant non binary in a wheelchair.

343 was made by MS for the specific purpose of making Halo. So if they want Halo made differently they will change all the people and processes in the studio. It will always be 343 involved no matter what, even if they call upon help from other studios that they own.

343 is just Microsoft. You think they would "give" Halo to a studio like iD and let them make anything they want with no oversight? If there was ever gonna be a blue haired MC it's because Halo brand management blessed it, this isn't studio-roullete.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Still being played and still on the top 50.....sure its not doing Fortnite or Warzone numbers, but still a franchise thats holding its own.

The campaigns can move on to Unreal and basically be a separate entity.

The MP is current doing well and basically every update has been well received with Season 5 being quite a jump in quality for the game.


Halo Infinite has good Multiplayer, and a pretty good Campaign.
Halo 5 had brilliant Multiplayer....fuck the Campaign.
Halo 4 was a good campaign....fuck the Multiplayer.

It's not exactly setting the world ablaze, though. And the storyline and tone of the series were all wrong starting from Halo 4. It literally feels like the Star Wars sequel trilogy of video games. I honestly don't care what happens next in that story anymore because Infinite was a bunch of nonsense and it looks like they have zero ideas on where to go from there.

Maybe Gears 5 didn't have the best story either but to give Coalition some credit, at least they didn't fuck up that franchise quite as spectacularly as 343 did with Halo.

 

[NikuNashi]

343 was made by MS for the specific purpose of making Halo. So if they want Halo made differently they will change all the people and processes in the studio. It will always be 343 involved no matter what, even if they call upon help from other studios that they own.

343 is just Microsoft. You think they would "give" Halo to a studio like iD and let them make anything they want with no oversight? If there was ever gonna be a blue haired MC it's because Halo brand management blessed it, this isn't studio-roullete.

And they failed at it. They missed the hardware release so the box released with no launch title, then 1 year late released a mediocre game. End of story, move the franchise to better hands.

 

[BlackTron]

And they failed at it. They missed the hardware release so the box released with no launch title, then 1 year late released a mediocre game. End of story, move the franchise to better hands.

Did you read the rest of the post? lol

 

[Black_Stride]

It's not exactly setting the world ablaze, though. And the storyline and tone of the series were all wrong starting from Halo 4. It literally feels like the Star Wars sequel trilogy of video games. I honestly don't care what happens next in that story anymore because Infinite was a bunch of nonsense and it looks like they have zero ideas on where to go from there.

Maybe Gears 5 didn't have the best story either but to give Coalition some credit, at least they didn't fuck up that franchise quite as spectacularly as 343 did with Halo.

Halo and even Gears probably arent ever going to set the world ablaze ever again.
Dare I say the last game to enter that statosphere was Apex Legends otherwise its that popular game that just launched that cracks the top 10 for a month then "fades" out.

The top ~10 most played games on console have remained the same for literally years, even after a new generation launched.
I wouldnt be shocked if even nextgen most of the titles remain the same and/or are sequels to the current list.

• Fortnite
• GTA
• Siege
• COD
• FIFA/Madden
• NBA2K
• Apex Legends
• MineCraft
• Destiny(2)
• Overwatch(2)
• Roblox
• Rocket League - comes in and out

So effectively if you are a game thats stuck in the top 40 that counts as a success, but breaking into that top 10 is pretty much a no go.
Which is why I think people are overly harsh to Halo.....they expect it to break the top 10 consistently, but thats just not possible.
But it has consitantly stayed in the most played and with the seasons and updates being more regular its sticking relatively high more often than not.
Even if you gave the game to id it wouldnt be beating the current champs.

 

[CeeJay]

Oh boy the studio itself is a mess and now they're switching to an engine which has caused headaches for every studio who has used it so far in terms of optimization and performance. Only epic itself has gotten decent results from the engine so far and I have zero confidence in 343,s ability to utilize it well with no experience. Im not looking forward to what will be delivered when they will have to target 60fps on an engine that so far throttles the systems when using 2 of its core features and they will have to incorporate series S in the equation.

Man I miss bungies halo games, even though they might not have been the very elite in graphics in scale,gameplay,design they were amazing and they utilized their engine perfectly for their goals. Still remember reach and it was amazing on the 360.

Doesn't Gears of War run on UE? The Coalition have managed to get some really impressive results with the engine to the point where some of their work is now part of the core engine. They also worked on the Matrix demo along with Epic.

 

[NikuNashi]

Did you read the rest of the post? lol

Yes, it was as ill thought out as the first part of the post. A franchise as big as HALO will not be left to die slowly with a sub-par team.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Did you read the rest of the post? lol

It's not how it works, though. It's true that the games will continue to be made by the 343 Studios but it's not like Satya or Phil are sitting in their ivory towers and approving every story and design idea that comes across their desk. People are hired to do that kind of job and the people hired for 343 simply bungled almost everything they've been working on since the studio was created. Therefore, it's time for a management change at 343.

The reason why the previous team stuck around for this long is thanks to profit margins because, for all their failures, the games still sold well because it's Halo after all. That was until Infinite, of course, where the goodwill of the fans had finally run out and the game wasn't a commercial success that MS expected it to be.

 

[VAVA Mk2]

I hope the new game sticks with the lore and at least continues where Halo Infinite left off.

But I would still love a game based on Ancient Humanity.

Why not have an Activision or Bethesda studio do a game about the Human/Forerunner/Flood War and Certain Affinity lead while 343i supports dev of Halo 7?

 

[Drizzlehell]

Halo and even Gears probably arent ever going to set the world ablaze ever again.
Dare I say the last game to enter that statosphere was Apex Legends otherwise its that popular game that just launched that cracks the top 10 for a month then "fades" out.

The top ~10 most played games on console have remained the same for literally years, even after a new generation launched.
I wouldnt be shocked if even nextgen most of the titles remain the same and/or are sequels to the current list.

• Fortnite
• GTA
• Siege
• COD
• FIFA/Madden
• NBA2K
• Apex Legends
• MineCraft
• Destiny(2)
• Overwatch(2)
• Roblox
• Rocket League - comes in and out

So effectively if you are a game thats stuck in the top 40 that counts as a success, but breaking into that top 10 is pretty much a no go.
Which is why I think people are overly harsh to Halo.....they expect it to break the top 10 consistently, but thats just not possible.
But it has consitantly stayed in the most played and with the seasons and updates being more regular its sticking relatively high more often than not.
Even if you gave the game to id it wouldnt be beating the current champs.

I guess Gears was just a poster boy for the dudebro cover shooters of the 360 era, and it never was quite as popular as a multiplayer shooter as CoD or, case in point - Halo. There was a point in time when Halo was so astronomically popular that I think it had everything it needed to stay relevant, much like Call of Duty did. And it would, had it not been so mishandled.

I would be happy to be proven wrong, though, and see this series make a smashing comeback like CoD did with MW 2019.

 

[Black_Stride]

I guess Gears was just a poster boy for the dudebro cover shooters of the 360 era, and it never was quite as popular as a multiplayer shooter as CoD or, case in point - Halo. There was a point in time when Halo was so astronomically popular that I think it had everything it needed to stay relevant, much like Call of Duty did. And it would, had it not been so mishandled.

Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 pretty much killed any chance Halo was gonna stay in the top 10 anymore.
CoD was releasing yearly on multiple platforms, Halo was getting a few map packs and a new game every few years.
Even Reach wasnt that popular and was already spelling the "downfall" of Halo.....whether bungie made Halo 4 or not, Halo was all but done for being a "household" name.
By Halo 4, COD was already king of the hill and there was actually no going back.

 

[SABRE220]

Doesn't Gears of War run on UE? The Coalition have managed to get some really impressive results with the engine to the point where some of their work is now part of the core engine. They also worked on the Matrix demo along with Epic.

The most recent gow games ran on ue 4, we don't know how they will handle ue5 but yes they are generally very experienced and skilled in utilizing the unreal engine and after epic I would put my confidence in them in showing off the new engine.

 

[Ozriel]

So, basically we're getting a Halo 7.

I have no fucking hope with 343i, but Certain Affinity however, know what they're doing and given their history with the IP, better than 343i by miles.

The problem is the culture surrounding Microsoft's first party leadership and Phil having a hands-off approach towards them.

We already see what's happening with The Initiative and the rebooted builds of Perfect Dark, again and again, resulting in senior staff leaving the studio, and Crystal Dynamics being called in for support because Gallagher has a history with them and they're his "yes men" with no questions asked.

If MS wants the next Halo to succeed where Infinite has failed, they better have Certain Affinity in the driver's seat and 343i as the support. Not the other way around.

They don’t need to give CA the drivers seat. 343s issues with Halo Infinite stemmed from poor scoping leading to rebooting and struggles with getting content out for the live service portion. Nothing that can’t be fixed with the management change that’s already been implemented. Aside that, you’d be hard pressed to say they don’t have the skill or experience to pull this off.
Nobody’s going to keep a very large studio as a ‘support’ on their own title.

 

[Quixz]

Why not let ID Soft or Machine Games have a go at Halo.

 

[Black_Stride]

Doesn't Gears of War run on UE? The Coalition have managed to get some really impressive results with the engine to the point where some of their work is now part of the core engine. They also worked on the Matrix demo along with Epic.

The Coalition are legit kings of that engine.
And yes some of their addons have become core features of Unreal Engine main branch.

Looking forward to whatever they are working on next.
Im hoping they have a B-team that can make a smaller title thats a new IP.

Why not let ID Soft or Machine Games have a go at Halo.

Let id work on their own shit.
I thinking poking any fingers into id is a bad idea.

Machine Games could probably do something interesting in Halo, but it shouldnt be a numbered Halo game.
An offshoot title.

 

[Ozriel]

And they failed at it. They missed the hardware release so the box released with no launch title, then 1 year late released a mediocre game. End of story, move the franchise to better hands.

The community souring on the Infinite MP seems to have skewed the discourse around the Infinite Campaign, but it’s worth pointing out that the campaign reviewed very very well with critics.

Moving the franchise to new developers would be exactly the poor management you folks decry. The opportunity cost from doing that…imagine delaying a COD game or an ID software title for the hopes that a new team would miraculously do better than 343.

The issues that need to be fixed are known and not insurmountable. Improve visuals, ensure launch content is robust enough, ensure popular modes are in at launch and add more biome diversity.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

So... Infinite being a platform for the next 10 years didn't really work out, huh?

Corp mentality in full effect. Remember when WarFrame flopped and they ended up putting the grind in to re-launch the game and make it to what it is today, They have yearly conventions for their game.

Unreal engine….Im sceptical it’s going to play the same.

Codemasters were able to closely replicate WRC to Dirt Rally 2.0. from what they've been showing off with their engine change.

These studios don't just pay for engine but the Unreal contractors to assist them with getting what they want from the tech.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

.

 

[BlackTron]

Yes, it was as ill thought out as the first part of the post. A franchise as big as HALO will not be left to die slowly with a sub-par team.

Your answers make it sound like you missed the very next sentence? My point is that there could be an entirely new slate of people making the game and it will STILL be 343.

It's like saying MS should take Windows from the Windows team....they would just change who/what the Windows team is but it will still be "the Windows team". 343 IS the Halo team.

 

[Hudo]

Sad that they're opting to use UE5 for this. I think 343 had a pretty solid engine that produced a very clean look (in the sense that there were no weird shader artifacts or whatever). But oh well, if they think it will help their dev process...

I genuinely think their tech stack is fine and the issues are rather writing, level design and game design related. But what do I know.

 

[YOU PC BRO?!]

Alas, the failure of 343 is now complete. They spent years developing the shiny new SlipSpace engine for Infinite, only for it to be scrapped after a single game? What in the actual fuck? SlipSpace should have been a showcase engine. Packed with the latest Microsoft technologies and used as a test platform for experimental features. It should have taken advantage of everything; SFS, VRS2, DirectML, Mesh shaders... all of it. Infinite should have been the de facto visual benchmark for Series consoles. This is a complete humiliation for Xbox and Phil Spencer. Those in charge are completely out of their depth!

 

[BlackTron]

It's not how it works, though. It's true that the games will continue to be made by the 343 Studios but it's not like Satya or Phil are sitting in their ivory towers and approving every story and design idea that comes across their desk. People are hired to do that kind of job and the people hired for 343 simply bungled almost everything they've been working on since the studio was created. Therefore, it's time for a management change at 343.

The reason why the previous team stuck around for this long is thanks to profit margins because, for all their failures, the games still sold well because it's Halo after all. That was until Infinite, of course, where the goodwill of the fans had finally run out and the game wasn't a commercial success that MS expected it to be.

You said that's not how it works and then proceeded to cut down a bunch of strawman arguments I never made. There's already management change at 343, which was the point of my post, the people who work on Halo may change but you will always hear "343" because it happens to be the name of the studio they formed to make Halo regardless of who is sitting in it that day.

I assume Halo's brand management is at 343, not Phil or Satya lol. Because 343 is literally the place they created to manage Halo -duh. Like I said even if another studio helped with the game it's not like that studio would give us their completely independent take on Halo, changing our predictions for likelihood of blue hair chief. That's not how it works.

 

[Chuck Berry]

Nah I’m good

 

[Mr Reasonable]

343 exists only for the Halo business, it is their sole purpose, and last year they basically restructured the whole studio on the idea of giving Halo a brand-new start, and by the way throwing a franchise at a studio is really wrong and has proven to be awful for any game that was forced on a studio who didn't have a vision for it, furthermore this game has been in works for at least a year based on Pierre Hintze's tweets last year.

I am not saying they will do a fantastic job I am just saying we need to lower the torches and pitchforks, every studio have a fuck up here and there but they can bounce back.

I'm not arguing with or agreeing with your point, but I do think that if I were in charge (and with zero game development experience, I am particularly well qualified, just like many, many other posters on internet forums) that I would be wondering about letting studios put a pitch in for any of the franchises that are due to be iterated on or are dormant. I'm not sure how transferable skills are or how specialised those teams are, but I don't see how anyone could have a career working for different employers if skills weren't transferable.

It'd be pretty sweet to have a pitch day where studios get to put forward a basic vision for a title, and assessing if that's worth exploring. I expect, of course, that there are no shortage of ideas (I've got a few that I think would be amazing, just like everyone else) but I think that that there's probably a fair amount of risk aversion going on. Nonetheless, as a daydream, I think everyone can imagine various benefits and downsides from having studios make the same franchise over and over or a different game each time and could see that it could deliver some refreshingly interesting takes on a series - but that's tempered by the risk of that not happening too.

 

[rofif]

Hmmm, maybe time to fold 343i as a studio. Goodwill is not there.
Pin this up in the corporate break room and throw a dart at it. Bound to hit some studio that is Infinite-ly better.

jesus christ which maniac made that slide

 

[mortal]

They own id Software now, and they still give Halo to 343? lol

 

[Stafford]

So the rumor from earlier this year could be true after all.

I am sure they have their reasons to switch engines, but isn't this already the second engine switch? Wasn't one of the reasons Infinite took quite long to make and the rock development because of the engine switch?

And right now UE5 hasn't really exactly proven itself on console yet, has it? That Aveum game was not too hot, Lords of the Fallen.

I guess we'll see.

I've said it before, in Max Hoberman we trust.

I think dev on this title has been going for 3.5 years now from memory. Probably got word from above to flesh it out more in light of Infinite downs and ups and downs and ups.

I hope so man. You sound very optimistic and I hope you are right because it would not be great to have to wait many years for a new campaign. Many as in, sometime next gen.

 

[adamsapple]

They own id Software now, and they still give Halo to 343? lol

Maybe cause ID is already working on something? that Doom Year Zero project.

 

[Negotiator101]

Awesome. They're replacing the engine, the one thing that wasn't the issue.

It is and was very much the issue, first of all its a visually underwhelming last generation engine. Secondly its well documented that adding content in this engine is a long process which explains why this game is even now lacking content. They have a number of teams working with UE5 to help with this new Halo, I think it's great move.

 

[The Infectious Paradox]

 

[diffusionx]

I don't even know what 343 is at this point, MS rightfully gutted the studio and restructured it. So maybe they have it set up with competent, talented people with an actual vision in place moving forward. If so, it's a major improvement. It might also be more of the same and this next game will be a disappointing mess like all the other ones they did. But by itself, telling me that they are now using UE5 really doesn't mean anything and we probably won't hear anything from them in a while. I know that Halo as a brand is basically nonexistent at this point, and this next game won't have anything near the stakes the last few games had.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

For COD?ID Tech 7 as it's far newer than Q3's, looks great and performance is top notch plus they own it.

I dunno if that would scale well with Halo or what else they could use besides UE5 if they want good performance.

I think that although there may be some remnants of the Q3 engine in there, it's so heavily modified that I think they were able to call it their own thing.

Halo didn't have an engine problem, the game actually looked great to me. The single player was a great time too outside of some of the story beats. I enjoyed the approach to an open world and would definitely like to play another Halo game in a similar vein to that.

 

[HeWhoWalks]

Well, I enjoyed Infinite!

 

[mortal]

Maybe cause ID is already working on something? that Doom Year Zero project.

They couldn’t help? Arguably one of the best FPS developers in the industry and you don’t put them on Halo?
Idk seems like a goofy decision after how many chances were given to 343, but what do I know.