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Halo Infinite Devs Won’t Make Same Story Mistakes as Halo 5.

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
https://gamerant.com/halo-infinite-story-recap/

Justin Robey, who serves as the Director of Player Voice at 343 Industries said on a recent 343 Social Stream that the developers are aware of Halo‘s history and they are trying to keep players from getting lost with Halo Infinite‘s story:

Halo is one of those franchises that we have a lot of players who are probably going to come back when we release Halo Infinite and we just want to make sure as it gets in there that people aren’t lost, which is one of the things that people complain about with Halo 5. So it’s making sure there’s enough meat and awesome for the fans and that at the same time it’s approachable for people who are coming back in.”​

Just before Robey moved on in the stream, he made a quick reference to Kingdom Hearts 3 and what that game recently did in terms of story. One of the common critiques against that game is how hard it is for even dedicated fans to track all the connections that game makes with its main entries, remakes, and spinoffs. It’s unknown at this point how exactly Halo Infinite will end up bringing players along, but a clue could lie in how Kingdom Hearts 3 did it.
 

Diddy X

Member
Everything about this game looks promising so far , I don't ever anticipate any game, this is the exception.
 

Codes 208

Member
Halo 5 story just wasn’t exciting
It was also misleading from the pre-marketing. It felt like a dirty lie, and it doesn’t help that when we were concerned that we would only play as Locke for most of the game (according to his actor’s twitter or some shit) Frankie came here to say something around the lines of how it wasn’t true and the game focused heavily on the chief.

And after that we only play him for 3 of the 15 (12 if we exclude those shitty walking simulator levels)
On top of that many of us wanted to play as blue team for years, we finally had a chance here and it felt more like a friggin tease.

And don’t get me started on the convuluted bullshit surrounding the return of Cortana as a now oppressing “evil space empress”.
 
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JimiNutz

Banned
I want to believe but am still finding hard to get too hyped for this until they actually start showing us off some of the game. I'm expecting late 2020 release anyway so I imagine it'll be a long wait.
 

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
The question is: "what are those mistakes?" Microsoft and the Halo devs have a chronic inability to acknowledge past stumbles in the series. They want to sell you on the new game, but they can't sully the old brand and throw shade, either. So it's always token stuff like 'approachable for newcomers" yet "still appealing to hardcore fans" without any specifics as to how they're going to get the story trainwreck back on some kind of rails.

The Halo franchise has been making the same story mistakes since Halo 3...
 

Codes 208

Member
The question is: "what are those mistakes?" Microsoft and the Halo devs have a chronic inability to acknowledge past stumbles in the series. They want to sell you on the new game, but they can't sully the old brand and throw shade, either. So it's always token stuff like 'approachable for newcomers" yet "still appealing to hardcore fans" without any specifics as to how they're going to get the story trainwreck back on some kind of rails.

The Halo franchise has been making the same story mistakes since Halo 3...
The biggest sin of halo 4 was that they intentionally hired people to work on the multiplayer who didn’t like classic halo. The biggest sin of halo 5 was that they took everything that could of been good about halo 4’s story and threw it out the window (Cortana’s being dead, the didact, the Janus key, etc)
 
I always felt that the shit with those forerunner robot things in halo 4 and 5 was lame. I bet they'll do it again for Infinite.
 

CuNi

Member
I always felt that the shit with those forerunner robot things in halo 4 and 5 was lame. I bet they'll do it again for Infinite.

I mean they have to end the story one day to be able to bury it and hope nobody will ever remember it. So yeah infinite is probably going to deal with forerunners again but either they fix the game play with them, introduce new ones and make them enjoyable or they gonna finish them off for good in that game. I would love for the flood to have some kind of comeback though.. Always loved their design the most.
 
Let's be real. The story and especially the story telling in Halo games has always been terrible. You needed to read books to understand the story! The campaings were still mostly enjoyable. Halo 4 I barely finished, Halo 5 I had to stop after a few hours. And I play these games mostly for the single player. So, to get me back to Halo, they really have to deliver the goods on the campaign front. We'll see what happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
 

Fbh

Member
"you'll only need to read like 8 of the books for this one to make sense!!!!!".

I mean I hope it's true and from everything they have said so far Infinite is definitely the most exciting Halo project in a long time.
But after 2 disappointing games I'll keep my expectations low until they start showing stuff
 
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4 Wasn't bad, but 5's story wasn't good. Although Halo 5's MP was the most fun I've had in while even though the maps were disappointing. Instead of Forge maps they should have went the Perfect Dark method of compartmentalizing multiplayer maps to adjust for player count. That would have been way better than forge maps.
 
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Codes 208

Member
So what did 343 get wrong with Halo exactly?
The biggest sin of halo 4 was that they intentionally hired people to work on the multiplayer who didn’t like classic halo.

The biggest sin of halo 5 was that they took everything that could of been good about halo 4’s story and threw it out the window (Cortana’s being dead, the didact, the Janus key, etc)
This is but a small fraction of my complaints. Let’s talk about how in order to understand what’s going on it’s almost required to read the books and comics, what other game franchise does this?

Or how about the time when on the preorder page for halo wars 2 ultimate edition it said we would get access to the story expansion as well as season pass of characters, but when they announced the flood dlc, that was separate. Instead, we got a small two level expansion involving ODST that was announced after the flood dlc.

Or what about the marketing surrounding halo 5? Hunt the truth. I actually liked hunt the truth, it was a good lead up to halo 5 but the issue is that halo 5 takes it almost like it never happened. We’re here wondering for over a year what could’ve made chief gone rouge only for almost self parody moments like “chief does what he wants.” And him simply disobeying orders to find Cortana.

And I haven’t even mentioned inconsistent designs and retcons. For example, 343i has gone out of their way to explain the elites in halo 4 are a subspecies of the elites from bungie’s design. This is even echoed in halo 2A (speaking of which, fool me twice, broken game) as they reverted back to the classic designs. but in halo 5, why did arbiter go from the older species to looking like a Krogan from Mass effect?

Tl;dr 343i took my favorite franchise and Disney Star Wars’d it. And right now I’m cautiously optimistic about Infinite but I’m not holding my breath. Not after MCC and certainly not after 5.
 

norm9

Member
I'm been in the middle of Halo 5 for I don't know how long. There's just no motivation to keep going. And I love SP games.
 
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NickFire

Member
I feel like rabble rousing. MODS - please change the text of the OP. Delete everything and include a fake quote that says "We learned valuable lessons from Halo 5, and have decided Halo Infinite will be released on PS4 and Xbox on launch day."
 
why should we listen to anything this dev tells us? They straight up lie to their fans, they want Halo to be something that I don't care about and I would say 90% of the Halo fanbase does not care about. I just think 343i needs to be dissolved, MS made a mistake by handing their BEST game to an completely inept developer. They are a joke. They do not make AAA games and they never have. They have been working on Halo Infinite for so damn long (it will likely be 5 years since Halo 5 when this thing launches in 2020) and I still would bet every dollar it will be a terrible Halo game.
 

h00ters

Member
I'd rather they acknowledge the mistakes they've made with the core gameplay rather than the story.

Halo 2's single player was pretty garbage but people played that game for years and years because the multiplayer kicked ass and the core gameplay was as solid as a rock.

Fast forward to H5 with all the changes they've made and it just isn't fun any more. Focus on fixing that up rather than a single player campaign that most people will sink maybe 8 or so hours into and never revisit.
 

angelic

Banned
locke.png
 
I didn't hate Halo 5's campaign. But one thing that threw me off was that first cutscene where the Chief first sees Cortana and there was zero suprise. Nobody was shocked. I thought I had accidentally it a button and skipped a cutscene. Same thing happened with Halo 4. How did everyone seem to know who or what the Didact was except me the player?

Still love the games though.
 

Aintitcool

Banned
The engine tech they are building is crazy unique.

They also want to return to a more retro art style like halo 1.

Honestly if they want money’s they need to make halo 1.5 in between story.
 

MC Safety

Member
The amusing thing is the Halo developers were recently seeking narrative designers or writers (the two terms apply to different roles but are sometimes used interchangeably). One of the requirements listed on the job postings was the successful applicant needed to take a test on Halo lore. The example the ad gave -- whether this was speculative or fanciful I have no idea -- for a potential test question was the weight of a Warthog.

I'm all for game writers knowing the lore, but this hinted at the desire for a hardcore fan immersed in the minutiae of the Halo franchise. I'd have been interested in seeing the test that was given, especially in light of the posting and desire for a candidate with a very specific knowledge set.

It's entirely possible Microsoft is sincere in its statements. I mean, it's totally possible to have hired a Halo lore expert(s) to help create a game with a story that's friendly and accommodating to new audiences. But the series has gotten more and more -- I guess the right word is Byzantine in its approach. It's going to be interesting to see if the Halo team can change its course.
 

Graciaus

Member
It's unlikely they will make a good campaign going off their last two attempts. I'd rather they focus 100% on the multi-player since that is what people play for years. The core gameplay of 5 isn't bad (just different) but the map design of 5 was awful. I enjoy playing 4 much more and that is a bad halo but dumb fun on default settings.

I'll hope for the best but I expect another bad game. 4, 5, and the mcc disaster don't leave a great impression of this company.
 

VertigoOA

Banned
You can always see stinkles loosing his cool regularly when he posts. I have very little faith in 343 after Halo 5 and in their leadership. So it all sounds like fluff and bullshit.

I don’t think it should ever be understated how abysmal halo 5’s campaign is.

Forget that it barely has the master chief and gives us a medley of a mostly unlikable cast.

It’s the 5hr campaign, reused and trash boss battles, sad level design and art direction...

A AAA budget shooter should never be that bad. It still blows my mind how they shipped that campaign.

Fixing halo seems impossible to me. I honestly think it’s dead and even when given away for free essentially on gamespass... it’s still not being played.
 
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stickkidsam

Member
Even if they have learned what they did stupidly, how are they supposed to fix it? By the end of Halo 5, I couldn't have given less of a damn where the story would go. I was so bored and disinterested that I wasn't even mad. Just massively disappointed.

I really want to see them succeed of course, but I'm just not sure how they can make things engaging this late in the game.

Let's be real. The story and especially the story telling in Halo games has always been terrible. You needed to read books to understand the story!
Wort wort WHAT?

I don't know about you but I've enjoyed the story of every Halo game up to Reach, and even Reach was a good attempt. The only issue they had was newcomers might be confused if they jump into 3 before playing CE or 2. The actual events and plot were self contained though and the books merely fleshed out what was already there.

Halo 4 and 5 relied on the books to explain why anything was happening and who any of the characters were. The narrative focused so much on the expanded universe that it forgot to flesh itself out. Halo 5 was especially sad because it had such a promising lead up with it's Hunt the Truth series.
 

Enjay

Banned
"Sir, finishing this fight." If you lived through the time of that in-game line you can truly see how much hype this franchise has lost.
 

zeorhymer

Member
It’s unknown at this point how exactly Halo Infinite will end up bringing players along, but a clue could lie in how Kingdom Hearts 3 did it.
No one played KH3 for the story. Nomura had to spell out the story in the cut scenes cause it was so spread out.
 
One of the most jarring things for me with the Halo 5 "story" was how disconnected it was from 4. That game was literally all about cortana and chief's relationship. After she died imagine the possibilities for story telling if we got to see a mentally damaged chief foolishly searching for cortana after that vision he had with her. But NOPE FUCK THAT, here is agent Locke (who?) a character you don't care about and brushes chief aside from the story, then makes cortana a damn villain (why exactly?) even though after she was literally going bananas crazy (in Halo 4) and she STILL sacrificed herself to save chief. Halo 5 makes no damn sense, kinda like the writers were drunk. The game never felt like a sequel to me.
 
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angelic

Banned
The Halo universe is like fanfic gone mad, there is zero chance of fixing the story. It ended at Reach for me.
 

Crew 511A

Member
The Halo universe is like fanfic gone mad, there is zero chance of fixing the story. It ended at Reach for me.

Yeah...I enjoyed H5's multiplayer, as sparse and poorly supported as it was. But there's no fixing that campaign now. They only way is to have the Chief wake up from cryo after the events of H3 and we learn that H4 and H5 were just a crazy dream; a side effect of being in cryo.
 

Shmunter

Member
It needs to go Woke. Mistress Chief to rule them all!

Or maybe it always was a woman in the helmet? With a voice modulator!

Dang, I should pitch this.
 
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