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You should do it. I'd love to read it.

I have a three day weekend coming up with literally nothing planned. I'd have to get all info, dates and details for all four games (plus the PC version) in order and make sure facts are legit.

I could write a fucking Mama Robotnik thesis style OP about Gears and the growing pains it's been through. It would be overkill.

We'll see....

 

[Conor 419]

All was good until I read that. Really? Rockstar/Nintendo for an FPS franchise? Come on son.

Nintendo and Rockstar are the only two companies in the industry that look after their IP responsibly.

 

[hamchan]

For someone like me who hasn't been following the game, the OP is very nicely made, informative and detailed. Well done.

 

[BajiRav]

I tried to like Halo4 but I just don't have the motivation to play Halo 4. I spent a lot of time on H3 and HR but Halo 4 felt wrong at every level from campaign to multiplayer.

.

we learned a lot.

as a team and a developer.

I hope the primary lesson was "Halo is not Call of Duty".

 

[aHebrewMenagerie]

Foes and false friends are all around me, Lord Davos. They infest my city like roaches, and at night I feel them crawling over me.” The fat man’s fingers coiled into a fist, and all his chins trembled. "Halo came to the Twins a guest. He ate Lord Frankie's bread and salt, and hung his sword upon the wall to feast with his friends. And they murdered him. Murdered, I say, and may 343i choke upon their fables. I drink with Jessica jape with Bonnie, promise Kiki the hand of my own beloved granddson…but never think that means I have forgotten. The fans remember, Lord Davos. The fans remember, and the mummers farce is almost done, my son is home

Microsoft and 343i

What happened? Everything happened, Microsoft, the core fanbase, 343i, everything.

Microsoft having greater control over the series was always going to be a problem, Microsoft are incompetent and have mishandled and greatly damaged every single entertainment IP they've ever been responsible for. Their management, perhaps indisputably, are fucking stupid; not one of them challenged

- Releasing ODST at full price vs Modern Warfare 2
- Having Halo: Reach try and emulate CoD
- Making an independant canon that doesn't at all link to the series
- The low standards introduced by Halo: Spartan Assault
- The absolute massacre of the canon we saw in Halo 4

343i also proved to be a disaster. Frank O' Connor goaded the community relentlessly, bragging that their own vision was superior to that of the Halo fans that had lived and breathed since that beautiful day in 2001. Little care was put into Halo 4 at all

- They lazily reintroduced the Covenant as foes, essentially retconning the entire Halo trilogy in the opening 10 minutes of the game
- They have EVEN retconned the new trilogy, admitting they had absolutely no long term plans with the story of Halo 4, and as a result have cancelled Halo 5 and 6.
- They answered none of the questions the old trilogy left behind, and made no attempt to do so. The Master Chief; the greatest hero in humanity's history, was discovered to be alive.

"I THOUGHT YOU'D BE TALLER, LOL"

- The new faction were if anything, an afterthought, and were introduced unsuccessfully into the series.
- They slaughtered the canon. The ODST's were removed, old characters were nowhere to be seen, new Spartan's were introduced. They were the worst, the specialness of the Spartan programme was finally laid to rest, and the new Spartan's were your average bro figures, what was even worse was that they were not even questioned by the Master Chief. You want to make the Chief a human character? WHY NOT FUCKING HAVE HIM VOCALISE SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT A NEW PROGRAMME BEING INTRODUCED, WHICH WAS THE BASIS OF HIS ENTIRE EXISTENCE, AS OPPOSED TO SOME SHITTY FUCKING LOVE STORY WITH AN OVER SEXUALISED BLUE BLOB, YOU FUCKING CUNTS.

It was a great tragedy what the two companies did to Halo and look how the fanbase have suffered for it. Not that the fanbase are entirely blameless...

The fanbase

Neogaf was a wonderful opportunity. Members of 343i were active on this forum, and we had a large community to vocalise our ideas to them. unfortunately however, they were a community and not a fanbase. All of the Halo fans died at the Red Wedding with the Chief, me included. There are perhaps three real Halo fans left on this forum, the rest are a fucking joke. People would refuse to see the importance of custom game browsing and dedicated servers for the future of this IP, they ridiculed the thought that Microsoft's most important IP should be feature competitive with CoD, Battlefield and the Valve FPS's. Instead they only cared about trivial issues, such as the frame rate, camopaign scoring, whether theatre should be co-operative. They didn't even seem to care that Forge had been outsourced, and Halo 4 was in no condition ready to launch.

I valiantly called out 343i, but was shouted down by the greater community. See below an actual quote from a Halo Gaf member



And so as you can see, the Halo fanbase will never recover, it will never again be what it was.

Afterword

With Destiny soon to be released, the real Halo fans, who now live on a peaceful haven on a solitary asteroid somewhere in the stars, will once again be looking to Bungie to be their saviours, we will pray for them and hope they are brought to peace.

As for Microsoft? They should have done the noble thing and sold the IP to Nintendo or Rockstar, of course they didn't however and this whole disaster has been completely out of control.

Goodbye Halo, we will never forget you.

HOLY SHIT THE SALT IS ALIVE.

I really want 343/Microsoft to get it. I never got the chance to take part in Halo's golden age, I was a Reach kid.

Please, Microsoft, listen to the community, you won't regret it.

 

[Sydle]

Amazing post, OP. Agreed with everything said in this thread - 343i need to get CoD out of Halo or the series may be done.

I have a three day weekend coming up with literally nothing planned. I'd have to get all info, dates and details for all four games (plus the PC version) in order and make sure facts are legit.

I could write a fucking Mama Robotnik thesis style OP about Gears and the growing pains it's been through. It would be overkill.

We'll see....

I'd like to read it as well.

 

[blamite]

I don't know if this has been posted yet but even if it has it should be again:

 

[Defect]

Nintendo an Rockstar are the only two companies in the industry that look after their IP responsibly.

Other M.

 

[Waaghals]

But they outbungied bungie.

Wow, I mean, that's factually false. Between the linear levels and lack of features, they did not "Bungie" at all.

 

[squidhands]

I want Halo 5 to somehow make me think that 4 never existed. The only positive things I can say about 4 is that the cutscenes and voice acting were some of the best of the series, and that Frankie, Jessica, and Alison are exceptionally nice people to meet and talk with in person.

Everything else is just various shades of bad; looking back I'm kind of shocked I stuck with the game as long as I did.

 

[Franklinator]

Good posts, Fyre and Ghaleon. I haven't played the game in probably 5 months or so. I miss hanging out with HaloGAF, but I have such a miserable time playing it that it's not worth it. It sucks that the game I played for around 7 years has suddenly stopped existing.

 

[SmoothRunningGun]

Lacked that Bungie touch.

Seriously it was missing something...

 

[Loxley]

When Halo 3 was made free for all gold users, how did it's player population compare with Halo 4?

 

[Muffdraul]

I don't do MP so that's not a factor for me. I thought Halo 4 had a solid SP campaign, I played through it a few times, three or four maybe. Nowhere near as many times as the previous Halos. I think I played through Halo Reach about eight times before I finally started to get bored. And I've played it a few times since then. God only knows how many times I've played Halo 1/2/3 over the years.

Halo 4 looked and felt like Halo for the most part, but every once in a while there would be this jarring flashing neon sign that said "THIS GAME WAS NOT MADE BY BUNGIE. IT WAS MADE BY THESE OTHER FOLKS WHO JUST DON'T QUITE GET IT." Like the mech walker that was about as generic and unattractive as it could possibly be. Like the main villain using fucking telekinesis type powers to pick you up and toss you around like a ragdoll. Halo would occasionally stoop to sci-fi movie cliches, but that was just... ugh.

But it wasn't a bad campaign. I'm not looking forward to Halo 5 with anywhere near as much hype as I looked to Halo 2, 3, ODST or Reach, but I'll play it on day 1 and I assume it'll be a good game.

 

[Overdoziz]

.

we learned a lot.

as a team and a developer.

"trust us"
"feels like Halo"

- Unknown, 2012



It still hurts.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

I'll tell you what happened.

They lost track of what the series excelled at. Simplicity.

They lost track of catering to the top percent of the competitive crowd. Creating a watered down competitive game where the skill level never goes beyond casual.

They lost track of how to tell a story without needing to read a book to understand its intricacies.

They lost track of providing cutting edge features out side of the main game.

They lost track of how to interact with their community with honesty and humility. It's okay to say we screwed up.

Which makes me more sad then ever, because Frankie, David Ellis and Co are good people.

Good post. I'm not much of a multiplayer gamer, but I found the campaign in Halo 4 weaker than Reach, the storytelling was awful and I thought the Prometheans were pretty rubbish enemies.

 

[Hydranockz]

I don't know if this has been posted yet but even if it has it should be again:

I like how every title except Halo 4 has, at least once, climbed up a few ranks after going down. Maybe Halo 4 will follow suit?

Edit: LOL, just spotted the CEA dot.

 

[feel]

I blame the community for playing and defending Halo Reach by Bungie for 2 years instead of going back to Halo 3 then, and practically telling the developers that it's ok to fuck with classic Halo with crap like sprint and spawning with recharging special powers. Oh you're going back to Halo 3 now? Well guess what it's too late, Halo is dead.

Pains me to not have Halo be a part of my life anymore but I'm glad the killing of Halo made me find PC gaming and Valve multiplayer games (csgo, dota), with devs in charge that just get it that you do not mess with the core of the tried and true classic, balanced, skill based, timeless gameplay that thousands/millions love and are passionate about for a good reason, and instead work on polishing details and making the surrounding package more appealing.

I still love you Frank pls gibe Hola 3 on Steam.

 

[A Serious Man]

Halo 1 and Halo 3 are some of my favorite games from their respective generations. Playing three hour long CTF matches on Sidewinder with four TV's and a bunch of other friends in someone's garage? It seems like I spent whole summers doing that. I have some deep-rooted love for the franchise. That said, Halo 4 is a dud. The campaign is exactly what I don't want from the franchise and the multiplayer is a muddled mess. Shifting the series more towards the CoD mold was a huge mistake. I'm hoping 343 sets out in a new direction and creates something interesting with the next game but I'm not holding my breath. There wasn't a single thing in Halo 4 that felt inspired or original.

 

[zackmorris]

People realized that it still wasn't Halo 2/ Halo 3 and got bored by it.

 

[Foolishfellow]

Since everyone has already explained why the multiplayer in Halo 4 sucks.

Just wanted to chime in and say that the Halo 4 single player made no god damn sense. I want to be fighting the covenant. I don't want to explore the emotions of my fucking one man killing machine. I don't have feelings for my AI, just like I don't have feelings for my fucking iPhone. Halo is not the franchise to explore shitty anime sci-fi cliches.

Honestly, they should probably just cut Halo 4 out of the timeline because it makes NO FUCKING SENSE.

 

[Parallax Scroll]

I played Halo 4 for a week, switched to Black Ops 2 when that came out, and never went back.

 

[JaggedSac]

I enjoyed Halo 4. I didn't play it as much as I'd like to have since my friends bought the fame at launch but soon shifted over to CoD once it released. I don't enjoy playing it as much with no party so my play time gradually died back as well. I personally don't see the game breaking changes that everyone else sees with Halo 4. I actually enjoy the combat. The campaign was weighed down by a convoluted story that didn't explain itself enough during a casual run through.

I'm actually hoping they go with even bigger changes to gameolay. If I want to play old school halo, I can play halo 3. I want bigger maps and larger player counts. Something akin to BF. Bring something new to the table that will bring in new folks, they've already lost the die hard, now go for broke and gather a new audience with whatever passion drives the new team.

 

[JustProgress]

I will gladly buy an X1 if they fix everything with Halo 5. If Halo 4 hadn't been so garbage it would have been difficult for me to go PS4 only.

 

[Doodis]

I'm buying a PS4 for next gen and will never own a new Halo game. The game is that bad.

Ghaleon - serious question: has another game taken the place of your nightly Halo romps? What game on PS4 are you thinking will replace this void? I'm genuinely curious, this isn't meant to be snarky. It seems to me any of the alternatives are basically the things you hate - COD, etc.

 

[LilWayneSuckz]

The reason why I'm not planning on buying Halo 5 (for now) after being a fan of the Halo series, is because Bungie announced Destiny would be available for PS4 and the devs specifically stated that there would be a competitive multiplayer mode for "Destiny." So hopefully Bungie comes through where 343i could not and brings back a multiplayer mode that is a spiritual successor to their past Halo games.

 

[Defect]

I enjoyed Halo 4. I didn't play it as much as I'd like to have since my friends bought the fame at launch but soon shifted over to CoD once it released. I don't enjoy playing it as much with no party so my play time gradually died back as well. I personally don't see the game breaking changes that everyone else sees with Halo 4. I actually enjoy the combat. The campaign was weighed down by a convoluted story that didn't explain itself enough during a casual run through.

I'm actually hoping they go with even bigger changes to gameolay. If I want to play old school halo, I can play halo 3. I want bigger maps and larger player counts. Something akin to BF. Bring something new to the table that will bring in new folks, they've already lost the die hard, now go for broke and gather a new audience with whatever passion drives the new team.

Jesus Christ, NO! If you want a game that plays nothing like Halo then play Battlefield or CoD. Why does Halo have to fuckng change? Why doesn't Bf or CoD change?

I want to play HALO, not some bastardized combination of generic shooters with terrible mechanics and whatnot. Give us EQUAL STARTS WITHOUT SPRINT, LOADOUTS, AA'S. Put weapons back on the map and promote high level play.

 

[GhaleonEB]

Ghaleon - serious question: has another game taken the place of your nightly Halo romps? What game on PS4 are you thinking will replace this void? I'm genuinely curious, this isn't meant to be snarky. It seems to me any of the alternatives are basically the things you hate - COD, etc.

Nope. Halo was my staple MP game, and I haven't found another since. I've kind of been bouncing around XBLA games and some iPad games waiting for Destiny to land, which is what I hope will fill that void.

 

[Fezan]

I cant say anything about multilayer because i only played Halo sp and to me it was a very big disappointment.
Story made no sense.(chosen one and romancin A.I ?)
Big open arenas were gone
New weapons were terrible.
Graphics which were hyped up a lot just came out bland with no visual identity

 

[Anth0ny]

I really enjoyed the campaign, but had no desire to play multiplayer after hearing all the changes they made to it.

 

[Omega]

* Roughly a year after release, Halo 3 had a 1.1 million peak population day. Reach had a 900,000 peak population day after the same amount of time. Halo 4 clocks in at 20,000 peak for it's annual checkup.

That's worse than I thought. It's actually quite pathetic.

Halo would have been my reason to get an Xbone, but 343 has continued to disappoint. Their patch for Reach was supposed to fix the game, but arguably made it worse. Halo 4 speaks for itself, and then the OP just adds to the failure this game was.

Perhaps the dumbest thing they did was in single player. Locking away the terminal content and forcing people to use shitty ass Halo Waypoint. It wouldn't have been that bad if the content wasn't important, but it was.

 

[Reluctant-Hero]

OP is perfect. Halo 4 was not only a bad game, but the worst Halo game. It destroyed my love of the franchise and completely eroded my faith in the Xbox brand.

And I'd still love to hear the story as to why Ryan Payton left the development team.

 

[JaggedSac]

Jesus Christ, NO! If you want a game that plays nothing like Halo then play Battlefield or CoD. Why does Halo have to fuckng change? Why doesn't Bf or CoD change?

I want to play HALO, not some bastardized combination of generic shooters with terrible mechanics and whatnot. Give us EQUAL STARTS WITHOUT SPRINT, LOADOUTS, AA'S. Put weapons back on the map and promote high level play.

You should check out Halo 3.

 

[oVerde]

I enjoyed Halo 4. I didn't play it as much as I'd like to have since my friends bought the fame at launch but soon shifted over to CoD once it released. I don't enjoy playing it as much with no party so my play time gradually died back as well. I personally don't see the game breaking changes that everyone else sees with Halo 4. I actually enjoy the combat. The campaign was weighed down by a convoluted story that didn't explain itself enough during a casual run through.

I'm actually hoping they go with even bigger changes to gameolay. If I want to play old school halo, I can play halo 3. I want bigger maps and larger player counts. Something akin to BF. Bring something new to the table that will bring in new folks, they've already lost the die hard, now go for broke and gather a new audience with whatever passion drives the new team.

I would love a proper Halo with the size of BF4 with the physics touches here and there too.

 

[Defect]

You should check out Halo 3.

Yeah, fuck you hardcore fans who play our games religiously for years, fuck you even though you care enough to stick around even after we fuck up a sequel.

We have a game for those who don't like Halo 4, it's called Halo 3.

 

[User 73706]

I have bought and played a LOT of every single FPS Halo game. (I never got aroIt is also probably one of my favourite for online multiplayer of the series. I just find the base gameplay really satisfying and entertaining, the loadout and perk system never really bothered me because it doesn't affect the gameplay all that much.

That's one of the major problems with the combat in and of itself. In Reach, the Loadout system was far from perfect, but you only had to really ever account for a single variable, which would be whatever Armor Ability the enemy carried. People were already complaining because, save for seeing a Jetpacker from behind, there's little to no visual identity for the abilities meaning the entire sandbox becomes a gamble. Now take Halo 4, which gives you around 5-10 variables per 5 starting loadouts you have the capacity to unlock, and the sandbox just becomes an even bigger clusterfuck.

Having played all the games, it's probably worth noting that going by KD spreads and all of that I'm statistically the worst Reach player in the mainline HaloGAF community and likely the worst in Halo 4, too. That being said, I can still hop on Halo 3 with randoms or Halogaffers and not consistently end up first, mind you, but I can at least put up a fight and even get MVP on rare occasions.

The fact that Halo 4 was designed to be "accessible," yet doesn't provide anywhere near easy access for awful players, is somewhat telling.

As for those wondering how Spartan Ops turned out, look no further than here.

 

[EGM1966]

Some great points and feedback in this thread. And it occurred to me reading through that at it's most simple the issue is that Halo has become a brand, one that is clear and distinct from other brands in the market - and they fucked with the brand and they found out fucking with a brand people know and love is mostly a bad idea.

 

[Tesseract]

garbage multiplayer, ghaleon explained why. most of that shit is immutable, devs have no business fucking with it.

 

[Micromegas]

I was a HUGE Halo fan. But with 4... the initial MP of 4 was fun, but you could feel that drop-off, just like that graph. This fracturing the play-base w/ paid map-packs is a killer, too. You'd think they'd learn.

The Spartan Ops were a great idea, but they we so shallow gameplay wise, and that writing/characterization was just so... GRATING that it was... I dunno, just gross.

Single player just wasn't very fun. They had a great opportunity to tell an interesting story with all of those elements, but again, terrible writing. Enemies no fun to battle, staid environments, no sense of exploration or wonder. It just wasn't fun.

 

[JaggedSac]

Yeah, fuck you hardcore fans who play our games religiously for years, fuck you even though you care enough to stick around even after we fuck up a sequel.

We have a game for those who don't like Halo 4, it's called Halo 3.

343 should have went with a yearly release cadence of slight graphical tweaks and new maps taking Halo 3 as a base. That's what I like in my sequels.

 

[Doran902]

Halo 4 is the reason i'm not bothering with an Xbox One and going ps4.

Although the decline started with Reach for me, I thought Reach had one of the better campaigns but the push towards call of duty style mp started with Reach and ruined Halo imo.

 

[Prinz Eugn]

I can't wait for a public or semi-public post-mortem of Halo 4 development. I think it probably made the legendary Halo 2 crunch look like small bananas. I have a feeling nearly all the issues boil down to issues with building a team from nearly scratch and using an antiquated hyper-proprietary engine, and in getting things working they simply didn't have time to test and reconsider some of the dumber gameplay features (or even give themselves the option to remove them later, like flag drop or sprint).

"Legacy Code"

 

[Swarmerr]

I hope that 343 brings Halo back with their future games.

Even if I never play a new Halo game again, I just want to see it succeed.

Halo is what brought me into gaming and it hurts to see how far it has fallen. It is has gotten so bad for me that I don't even want to play previous halos simply because it reminds me of what the series used to be. Heck I can't even play shooters because the first thing I compare it to is previous Halos. I will be playing counterstrike or battlefield and find me saying to myself (I wish I could jump higher or I wish I could bounce that frag grenade) Idk, I miss the small things when I play other shooters.

I was never a part of the neogaf community or ever cool enough to be known in the general halo community. However, it is very clear the community has shrunk and struggled over the past couple of years. To people that are still an active part of the community I give you serious props. I for one was/am not able to continue to be a part of Halo.

Frankie and 343i,

The community at large does not want to see you fail. It might come off as such but in the end if you fail the community doesn't have a game or experience to look forward to after a day at work or school. Please remember that sometimes your harshest critics are some of Halo's biggest fans. Good luck and I hope you and the 343i team can restore Halo back to a game, which for some of us, started it all.

From,
A sidelined Halo fan

 

[zma1013]

Bad maps, bad weapon balance, power weapons for everyone!

 

[FunkyPajamas]

.

we learned a lot.

as a team and a developer.

The truth is you're not going to come out and say "Well, HaloCoD is here to stay. Suck it up.", so I guess... we'll be the judge of that?

 

[Smokey]

Let it all out bros. Maybe 343 will listen.

Lol

:l

 

[Deadstar]

Lacked that Bungie touch.

It didn't have a lot of soul. Cortana looked really strange. The multiplayer maps were not very good. The alien weapons were pointless because they were the same as all the other equivalents. They removed armor lock. The list goes on and on. The graphics were pretty good though I'll give it that. I'm pretty sure I'm done with Halo after 4 came out. I'm sure 343 worked really hard on it but I think they played it too safe. It felt like Halo Remix rather than a full Halo sequel.

 

[king picollo]

This entire post is correct.

With the edition of bad maps. Since Halo 3 i feel the Halo maps have been getting worse, they just don't seem well thought out at all.

Give us Halo 4 netcode, Halo 3's gameplay and Halo 3 and Halo 2's maps and you will give us the Halo game most fans want.

 

[Omega]

You should check out Halo 3.

Yeah, Halo fans should play a 6 year old game while 343 makes games for people who don't like Halo. Worked so well for them with Halo 4

If you want Battlefield, play Battlefield. If you want sci-fi battlefield, there's Battlefield 2142.

 

[Jac]

The Prometheans were a thoroughly uninspired enemy design, both in appearance and in the way you fight them.

They just look like stock aliens, and they remind me way too much of the Space Pirates of Metroid Prime 2, which only hurts any attempt at making them unique even more.


.

I've been saying this since the first trailer revealed.

But they outbungied bungie.

Not really. Furthermore, Review scores are often part of the marketing itself.