Halo 343 Studios Needs to be Fired from Halo

[Husky_Khan]

Not a big Halo-ite myself and never played any of the recent games but this video came out of the blue from Roanoke Gaming.



I had no real frame of reference for most of it since I'm unfamiliar with the latter parts of the franchise but it seems like 343 Studio's malice and incompetence includes lying trailers, crappy inferior storylines compared to the original three games, stability issues in gaming, the exploitation of their ingame store, lack up ingame updates, shitty updates that ruin good parts of the campaign and multiplayer of their games, and so on.

So... thoughts?

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The first game didn't really need a sequel. By the time of 3 what story they had mined out of it had concluded and there really shouldn't have been any further games, though Reach did have fun multiplayer. Feels like the franchise is only kept alive because it's the only Microsoft exclusive that people cared about... a decade ago.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

I certainly think there were more stories to be told in the Halo Universe, be they before or after the war. The problem is 343 weren't brave enough to do a Halo:Reach and take a step away from Chief and Cortana.

You could have crafted an entire trilogy out of other surviving Spartans trying to deal with a universe that is no longer at war. Instead we got the current mess.

 

[Typhonis]

Heck a story about a regular soldier trying to survive and doing so would have been good. One where you had to plot and plan to enact a mission in an openish world.

 

[Laskar]

Huh. Listened to this one when I got home. I wasn't expecting much because there's been a spate of "Fuck it. I'm through with Halo" videos, so I thought it was a bandwagon. I've never watched any of this guy's videos either. His content looks kinda interesting, but the algorithm hasn't seen fit to throw him my way.

But Roanoke made a really good point, one I don't think I've heard anywhere else. One that perfectly distills the spirit of every single legitimate complaint that's been leveled against 343i, and sums up the malaise in the Halo fandom.

"If any of 343i's games had been standalone titles from a new company, that company would never have gone on to make a second game."

Bam. He just said it. Halo has been in the hands of 343i longer than it was in the hands of Bungie, and it's only lasted this long through pure fucking brand recognition. Halo 4 may have had a compelling story, but the compelling parts of that story were carried over from the previous games. Halo 5 was a broken clusterfuck that got patched into a usable and even fun state over the course of a few years, but the reason it lasted long enough to get patched was that Halo fans were drawn in by the brand recognition.

Any of the Bungie-Era Halo games could have stood on their own. I think Reach would have fared the fared the worst. Would have done decent, might have been remembered, but I'm not sure it could have justified a sequel.

There's a lot of craftsmanship missing from the 343i games. It's not just the gameplay, it's not just the art direction, it's not just the multiplayer features. These games are shipping broken with features missing at launch, or simply never delivered at all. 343i is a rotting organization. The management team is clearly dysfunctional, and it's clear that they never managed to build a functional studio. There's some very talented people working there, especially on the lore side, but I'm not sure this is a studio that can deliver a complete game. Might have to disband them and start again, or just shop the IP out to other studios.

Halo: Infinite was a breath of fresh air, but it was supposed to be the foundation for the next ten years of Halo. At this point, it looks to be stillborn. It died faster than the Reclaimer Trilogy Saga.